Back to School
by iColor With Crayons
Summary: Steve's newly thawed out and not quite so keen to jump into another war. Instead, he wants to take time and immerse himself in the new world he woke up to. After a long chat with Tony Stark, Steve decides that college is the way to go about that.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Introduction**

"Captain Rogers?" Agent Hill poked her head into Steve's cramped apartment for the tenth time that day.

After SHIELD had extracted Steve Rogers from the ice, they had stuck him in this small apartment and told him to rest. To recover. As if spending 66 years underwater wasn't enough rest.

Steve looked up from the computer that Agent Coulson had taught him to use the day before. He had tried to catch up on everything that he missed, but found that it was much more difficult than it had been in the old days. He couldn't just go to the library and find a book summarizing the years; there were too many different categories of life for that. There was years of military history, cultural phenomena, various food trends...there were entire websites that consisted of nothing but "artsy" pictures of glitter in bathtubs, spray painted garbage, and pizza lying in the grass. Steve would be lying if he said that he understood the world that he found himself in.

Steve closed the laptop and looked up at Agent Hill. He let out a heavy sigh and smiled sheepishly. "Agent Hill."

"How are you settling in?" Agent Hill asked with a sympathetic smile. Everyone looked at Steve like he was a basket case these days. He hated it. He may not have understood everything surrounding him just yet, but he was capable of understanding it all. He had, after all, spent a few days working in the lab with Howard Stark before.

"Fine." Steve lied.

"Good." Agent Hill obviously didn't believe him. "Well, um, if you're feeling up to it, Tony Stark sent a car for you. Tony is -"

"Howard Stark's son." Steve's eyebrows furrowed.

He had come across a few news reports about Tony while browsing the internet. He looked just like Howard. From what Steve had read, he behaved like him, too. That was strangely reassuring. The Stark lifestyle lived on.

Agent Hill nodded, still smiling that sympathetic smile.

"Yeah, you know what? I think that would be good for me. It would be much more familiar than any of this." Steve gestured around the apartment before affording Agent Hill an apologetic smile. "Not that I'm not grateful for it all, I just…"

"No, I understand." Agent Hill agreed. "I'll let Tony know that you're on your way. The car is just downstairs. You'll know it when you see it."

"Thanks."

Steve shrugged on a jacket before emerging from his apartment and wandering down the stairs. Once out of the building, he noticed a massive limo occupying a majority of the street. It had "Stark" written all over it. With an amused grin, he approached the car.

The driver's window rolled down. "Captain Rogers?"

"Yeah," Steve smiled weakly. "I'm just going by Steve these days."

"I'm Happy."

"That's...nice?"

The driver laughed. "No, people call me Happy."

"Oh." Steve felt his face redden as he climbed into the back of the limo. "Then it's nice to meet you, Happy. Have you, ah, have you been working for Tony for long?"

"Too long."

Steve laughed. "He can't be that bad."

"You don't know him."

"No, but I knew his dad. I don't think he could out-do Howard."

"Bet you ten bucks that you're wrong."

"You're on." Steve grinned.

It was nice to talk to somebody that didn't look at him like he was an animal newly rescued from the shelter. It was nice to be able to joke around with somebody that wasn't worried about setting him off or offending him in any sort of way. Steve immediately decided that he liked Happy.

"Did you spend much time with Howard?" Happy glanced at him through the rear view mirror. He didn't look like he was trying to make small talk; he seemed genuinely curious about Steve's connection to the Stark family.

Steve nodded. "Yeah. He...ah...well, he made me. There were a lot of days spent in the lab with Howard. He'd invite me over for dinner sometimes, too, but I think that was more to impress women than it was to spend time with me. Did you ever meet him?"

Happy shook his head. "I was hired the day after Howard...well, you know. Tony was a kid; he had just gotten his license. He didn't feel comfortable driving after the accident."

"Poor kid."

Except, Tony wasn't really a kid at all. He was almost twice Steve's age. Not even Howard had been that old when Steve went into the ice. Steve didn't know quite how to feel about that particular fact.

"Yeah, well. He's got a lot of other things to worry about, anyway. You should see the stuff he dreams up. His mind is thousands of years ahead of everyone else."

"Well, I'm sort of used to being behind the times these days."

"Then you'll feel right at home."

Steve chuckled. Yes, he definitely liked Happy. Maybe he would invite Happy over when he was tired of all of the sad smiles and unnecessary explanations that the agents at S.H.I.E.L.D. kept offering him. It would be a welcomed break from being treated like an antique.

"And here we are." Happy declared as they drove into what looked like a parking garage. They were immediately surrounded by at least twenty cars. They were all glossy and looked very expensive. Steve took a moment to look around at them before following Happy in the direction of the stairs.

Happy led Steve through the most high-tech house that Steve had ever seen. He didn't stop and point out various items in the house to explain the technology behind them - something that Steve appreciated. Steve just glanced around at his own leisure as they strolled through the massive rooms and narrow hallways.

"He's in his lab. He's always in his lab." Happy explained from over his shoulder.

"He got that from Howard."

"Happy? Is that you?" A male voice called from the bottom of the staircase that Happy and Steve were now descending. "Is he here? Hill said that he would come."

"He's here." Happy answered, sparing Steve a small smile. Steve smiled back despite the nerves pinching at his stomach. He was about to meet Howard Stark's kid. His full grown kid. It seemed too surreal to be true.

"Good. Good. Ah, don't you have something else to do? I think I saw a maid running around without a badge on this morning. Maybe go handle that." A scrawny brunette materialized at the bottom of the staircase. He shifted his weight from foot to foot as he looked at Happy imploringly.

Happy nodded. He glanced at Steve and smiled reassuringly before turning around and going right back up the stairs, leaving Steve alone with Tony. It was then that Tony finally looked at Steve. Steve looked right back at Tony.

He looked a lot like Howard. He had the same big, brown eyes, the same dark hair that was sticking up at all angles (Howard was constantly messing up his hair when he was stressed out), and the same mustache. He did possess a few qualities that differed from Howard, though. He seemed much more hesitant than Howard. He was looking Steve over warily, not quite sure what to make of him just yet. He was also missing the crowd of women that Howard usually had swarming around him.

"So you're the famous Captain Rogers." Tony finally said. He didn't sound very much like Howard.

"So you're the infamous Tony Stark."

Tony stared at Steve long and hard. Steve wondered if he had managed to offend Tony. He didn't know whether or not he had inherited his father's sense of humor. His worries were put to rest when Tony chuckled and took a step forward, reaching out a hand towards Steve. Steve ambled down the remaining stairs and shook Tony's hand.

"I feel like I'm meeting the Goddamn Wizard of Oz." Tony confessed, still looking Steve over like he was some sort of puzzle that he had yet to figure out.

"Why?" Steve had read the Wizard of Oz, but he didn't quite get the reference.

"Because I'd heard so much about you as a kid that I just…" Tony shook his head and laughed. "You didn't seem real. You were just a bedtime story."

"Yeah? Well, knowing your dad, half of it was probably made up." Steve admitted.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like my dad would tell me bedtime stories. He only told me about you when I was in trouble. _Steve wouldn't do paint the cat, Steve wouldn't steal the car, Steve wouldn't hide in my carry-on bag halfway across the Atlantic Ocean_."

Steve arched an eyebrow but decided that he didn't know Tony well enough to ask about any of those stories. Yet. "If Howard didn't tell you, who did?"

"My Aunt Peg. Well, I guess you'd just know her as Peggy, wouldn't you? What was the deal with you two, anyway? Did you...you know?" Tony clicked his tongue and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Steve cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"We were close."

"How close?"

"Close enough."

"Hm." Tony looked Steve over for a minute, obviously dissatisfied with his answer.

"Did you see Peggy a lot when you were a kid?"

"All the time. She usually watched me when my parents were off making the world a better place. Sometimes she'd even bring me on some of her missions. One time I saw her beat the shit out of a man with nothing but a stapler."

"You're kidding." Steve folded his arms across his chest and beamed.

"Nope. It was awesome."

"Well, she is a pretty incredible woman."

Tony nodded, looking at his shoes for a moment. "Have you seen her yet?"

Steve shook his head. "No, not yet. SHIELD's pretty much kept me on house arrest for the past few weeks. I think they're waiting for me to have some kind of breakdown."

"Don't do that while you're here. My stuff is too valuable for that."

Steve snorted. "I wasn't planning on it. Have you...have you seen her lately?"

"I visit her when I can; usually on Sundays. We play Clue. She cheats."

"How is she?"

Tony looked down at the ground again. Steve didn't take that as a particularly good sign. "Y'know, she has her good days and her bad days. She's old."

Steve nodded but didn't press the question. It was obvious that Tony didn't want to talk about it. Steve understood.

"How about you? How are you? I read a little bit about you a few days ago and it sounds like you've had a rough few months."

Tony's eyes widened for a moment. Showing his inner Howard, he caught himself and flashed Steve a smirk. "You've had a rough 60 years, Cap. I think you win."

Steve shrugged and shook his head. "I don't really think it's a competition. Besides, I was asleep during that time. I didn't really have to do much."

"I know. I thought Fury was going to have to start sending a chaperon in with Coulson while he monitored you."

"What?"

"Oh, yeah. Dude's obsessed with you."

"And you're not?" Steve nodded towards an entire wall plastered with newspaper clippings that appeared to be about him. Tony scowled.

"I'm not obsessed with you, I'm just following your story. There was more than one story about the Wizard of Oz, you know."

"I do know." Steve agreed. "My mom used to buy me the books when I was sick."

"Buying books." Tony smirked and shook his head. "God, you're ancient. C'mon, I'll show you the rest of the lab. I bet all of this looks like a different planet to you."

"Not really." Steve bit back as he followed Tony through the lab. "Howard's lab looked like this, too. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. It's sort of familiar."

"Did you spend a lot of time with my dad?" Tony asked as they walked.

Steve shrugged, unsure of how to answer the question. "Some time. We were trying to win the war. We couldn't have done it without him. He was a genius. You probably already know that, though."

"Yeah, that's about the only thing I know about him."

"You weren't close?" Steve couldn't really picture Howard being much of a family man.

Tony snorted. "I think I saw him ten days out of the year."

"You're joking."

"Mmm, I don't really joke about my dad."

"I'm sorry, Tony. He was a great guy. Really."

"I'll have to take your word for it."

Steve smiled grimly. He felt for Tony; he hadn't seen much of his dad during his childhood, either. He was always out trying to find work to put food on the table. Much as Steve had tried not to resent him for his absence, it had happened all of the same.

"What are those?" Instead of making some kind of speech to try to cheer Tony up, Steve decided to distract him by asking questions. It had always worked on Howard, after all.

"Those?" Tony's eyes lit up. Steve smiled. "Those are my suits. Haven't you heard about them?"

"Ah, Tony. I've researched you a little, but I don't know everything about you yet."

Tony sighed impatiently and guided Steve over to a huge collection of the suits that he was talking about. They were all bright red with gold accents. It seemed that Tony was just as much a showman as Howard had been.

"This is how I got out of that little hostage shindig I was in a little while ago. They're better than planes; they can fly, they're fully weaponized, and they've got the most advanced radar system in the world. Best of all, they're incredibly rare. You're looking at the only ones on the planet."

"Really? You made all of that? How's there room for all of that stuff?" Steve craned his neck to get a better look at all of the angles of the suit.

"Technology has advanced since 1940." Tony smirked.

"So people keep telling me." Steve sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets and wandering past the set of suits to a wall covered in picture frames and more newspaper clippings. It seemed that Tony was a bit of a hoarder. Howard had been like that, too. He had a hard time letting go of things.

One picture in particular caught Steve's attention. Tony looked incredibly young - maybe twelve years old - and he was wearing a cap and gown and clutching a diploma. A much older Howard Stark was standing beside him, arm draped around his shoulder and that wide, cheesy smile of his playing on his lips. A beautiful woman stood on the other side of Tony; a woman that Steve didn't recognize. It must have been Tony's mother.

"Were you graduating grade school?" Steve asked, turning around to catch Tony's attention before gesturing towards the picture. Tony let out an annoyed huff and walked over to get a better look at the picture. When he did, he let out a dismissive noise and shook his head.

"I was graduating college."

"College?" The word must have meant something different in the 21st century.

"Didn't anyone tell you that I was a boy genius? I finished my master's degree while the rest of my friends were still picking their noses in high school. It isn't really that hard; you just have to be able to repeat whatever the professor says and make it sound like it was your idea. It's just like any other sort of school."

"What college did you go to?" Steve questioned, not taking his eyes off of the picture.

"MIT. Don't tell me, you went to a more historic school, didn't you? Harvard? No, Princeton. Yeah, you seem like a Princeton kind of guy to me. Have you gone back yet? Are you going to visit and heckle all of the kids, complaining about what it was like in your day?" Tony teased with a playful grin. Steve smiled back awkwardly.

"I didn't go to college."

"Really? Did the war get in the way?"

Steve chuckled and shook his head. "More like the Depression."

"Yeah, but that happened before you would've gone, right?"

"It wasn't over in just a year, Tony. It lasted up until I went under the ice. The first time I went to the grocery store and saw the price of everything today...I thought someone was playing a joke on me. Anyway, I had to drop out of school when I was pretty young. Times were tough and we all needed to chip in to pay the bills."

"Oh." Tony was quiet for a moment. Steve wondered if he had overshared. "How far did you get?"

"Ninth grade."

"Huh."

"It wasn't all bad. It was nice to get away from the bullies. I used to get picked on a lot. Believe it or not, collecting scrap metal was much better than dealing with courtyard beatings."

"Fair enough." Tony agreed. "You should think about testing for your GED, though. Can't get much work without a degree these days."

"Really? Do that many people graduate high school?"

"Most people go to college, Steve."

"You're joking." In the 40's, college was a luxury. Only the rich kids, the talented athletes, and the super smart eggheads got to go. The rest of the more average students graduated and got a job wherever they could. The idea that everyone got to go seemed like a completely different concept.

"Nope. You might find yourself a little under qualified for any job you might apply for these days. That's alright, though. You can use me as a reference. Just don't apply to work for me. I don't need a high school dropout skulking around." Tony said good-naturedly. Steve ran a hand through his hair and nodded to himself.

College.

Now there was an idea.

He had always been a little bit disappointed at never having been able to finish school, and now he had the perfect opportunity to do so. He was still young, he now had money, and he had all the time in the world. Going to school would be the perfect way to catch up on everything that he had missed out on while still giving him time to adjust to everything.

That was it. That was what he was going to do.

Steve Rogers was going to go to college.

* * *

 **It's happening. It's all happening! So I got the idea for this fic while reading another fic (Shoutout to WinterShield13 and her story "What If") and decided that Christmas break from school would be the perfect time to get some serious writing done. I'll also be posting a few Christmas-y one-shots on Christmas Eve, but this will be a much bigger and longer project. So grab your notebooks and sharpen your pencils, folks. Steve Rogers is going to college and I am bringing you all along for the journey!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: Accepted**

If Steve had been expecting the process of going to college to be easy, he would have been sorely disappointed. Luckily, Steve Rogers knew that nothing in life came easy.

The most pressing issue was that legal records of him just did not exist. He was a ghost. All of his school records had gotten caught in a fire when he was seventeen - something that hadn't mattered so much at the time, but was now coming back to haunt him - he had never gotten a driver's license, and his army records had been closed the moment he was declared dead for the second time. While some might have hailed Steve as a hero, colleges wouldn't think that he was anything but a joke. He had to get some kind of record put together for his application.

Tony took care of that.

Though Steve had reassured Tony that he did not need to feel obligated to help, he did so anyway. He was just as stubborn as his father.

Steve never asked what it was that Tony did to secure as many legal documents as he did in such a short time span. Frankly, he just did not want to know. All he did know was that he was eternally grateful to Tony for doing so.

Now that he was officially a person in the eyes of the admissions boards, Steve had to sit for the SAT.

Preparing for the SAT was unlike anything that Steve had ever done before. Early one Saturday morning, Tony showed up at his door with an armload of test-prep books, a coffee-maker, and a short, dark-haired man named Bruce Banner. Steve and Bruce were hastily introduced before Tony began interrogating Steve on his knowledge of geometry. Apparently everything had changed since he was in grade school. The calculators alone were more advanced than half of the planes that Steve had been on during the war.

Still, after a week of tirelessly studying with Tony and Bruce (who turned out to be intimidatingly intelligent), Tony decided that Steve was ready for the SAT. He signed him up to sit for the test at a nearby high school and he sent him on his way with a gallon-sized ziplock bag containing five sharpened pencils, a huge rubber eraser, a dollar-store calculator, a water bottle, and almost three pounds of chocolate-covered almonds (which Tony promised would help him concentrate during the test).

As his driver's license had expired some time ago, Happy drove Steve to the high school where his test would be administered. Steve insisted on arriving an hour before the test was supposed to begin; he was terrified of being locked out of his testing room for being late. Tony tagged along to quiz him all throughout the ride.

When it finally came time to take the test, every student in the room looked at Steve like he was an alien. He couldn't figure out if they were staring at him that way because:

a) he was a twenty-five year-old man sitting for the SAT

b) he barely fit in the tiny desk that he was assigned

c) Tony Stark had dropped him off and had been yelling out words of encouragement as Steve walked into the testing room

d) all of the above

Whatever it was, Steve managed to ignore the stares. He had received stranger looks throughout his life. He had been a scrawny little kid running around alongside of his tall, dark and handsome best friend. He had been a propaganda tool for the U.S. army. He had been Captain America.

"When the clock strikes eight, you may begin your test."

The moment eight o'clock rolled around the corner, the room was filled with the sound of pages turning. Steve looked around, startled. The students surrounding him were like test-taking machines. He suddenly felt incredibly unprepared.

Regardless, he started his test. He struggled through the questions, his hand shaking as he filled in the appropriate bubbles. He smudged the pencil marks as his hands grew progressively clammy. He was finding out that he was a very anxious test-taker.

It took about five hours for Steve Rogers to complete the SAT. It was a terrible experience. His whole body broke out in sweat despite the fact that the test administrators had cranked up the air conditioning. He shuddered at least once every ten minutes. The sound of the clock ticking drove him crazy; time had never moved so quickly in his entire life. Everyone else was scratching away at their papers and he was struggling to remember the antonym of the word "foreign". Five hours felt closer to five years. Steve sincerely hoped that he had done well enough to never have to take the SAT again.

When he finally stumbled out of the high school, he looked around for Tony's gaudy limo. It was nowhere in sight. Steve scratched the back of his head and looked around awkwardly as the rest of the kids that had taken the test alongside of him returned to their cars.

"Hey," A gorgeous redheaded woman approached him wearing an all black outfit and a wry smile. "I'm supposed to pick up a fossil. Do you have any idea where I might find Captain Rogers?"

Steve balked at her. He had never been very good at talking to women, and spending sixty years under ice had done nothing to improve his confidence. Judging from the smirk on her face, she was making a joke. Steve smiled uncomfortably and scratched the back of his head again.

"Uh, ah, that's me."

The woman rolled her eyes. "I know that's you; you kind of stand out in a crowd. I'm Natasha. Tony got caught up with work and asked me to pick you up."

"Oh." Steve felt his face redden. Unfortunately, the serum had not obstructed his ability to blush. "Steve. Nice to meet you."

Natasha continued to smile at him like she knew something he didn't. "You too. Come on, the car is over there. Oh, and there's a man hiding in the backseat. He doesn't know that I know. His name is Clint. He means well, but he's an idiot. Don't punch him if he jumps out while I'm driving."

"Uh…" Steve followed Natasha across the parking lot. "Why is he hiding in the backseat of your car?"

Natasha rolled her eyes and threw a smile over her shoulder. "Because he's an idiot. And he thinks that I don't know that he finished his mission a week earlier."

"His mission? So you're…"

"Agents. Yes. But don't tell anyone, or I'd have to kill you." Natasha winked at him. Steve smiled awkwardly.

"Scout's honor."

"Hm." Natasha smirked as they got into the car. "So how did your test go?"

"Ugh." Steve groaned and shook his head.

"It couldn't have been that bad. You had the best tutors in the world helping you study."

"Yeah, but they weren't there during the test. Did you know that they time that thing? Why would they time the test? I don't understand. Did you ever take the SAT?" Steve asked, relieved to be discussing something that he was familiar with. A familiar topic made sitting in an unfamiliar car with a beautiful woman seem much more bearable.

"I can't say I have." Natasha replied. "Why did you take it, anyway? I can't really imagine waking up in an entirely different world and wanting to go to school."

Steve shrugged and looked out the window. It was easier not to make eye contact. "It seems like the easiest way to get back into the world. I can take some history classes, immerse myself in the culture…"

Natasha wrinkled her nose and tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. "Couldn't you just read a book?"

"I could, but this seems more comprehensive."

"You could just ask Tony if you had questions."

Steve smiled and shook his head. "He doesn't need me following him around and asking a bunch of questions. He's got a life of his own."

"He seems very impressed with you. I thought he and Coulson were going to start a fanclub."

"Yeah, well. He's a good kid."

"Is he a lot like Howard?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

"Is it strange for you?"

Steve shrugged. "I'm getting used to it."

"Ah!" A spiky-haired blond suddenly popped up from the backseat. Natasha didn't so much as blink. Steve, on the other hand, jumped.

"Clint." Natasha admonished, glancing at the rearview mirror before returning her attention to the road. "You could have given Captain Rogers a heart attack. He is pushing ninety, you know."

"I'm fine." Steve responded, rolling his eyes and smiling.

"Ah, so you're the famous Captain America." Clint leaned forward and looked Steve over with a wide smile. Steve couldn't help but be reminded of his cousin's old golden retriever when he looked at Clint.

"I guess so."

"Coulson's obsessed with you."

"So I've heard."

"I think Tony's in love with you."

"Isn't he dating his assistant? Pepper?"

"Nah, she's just a cover." Clint waved off Steve's question and leaned forward conspiratorially. "My guess is that he's always played for the other field, he's just been worried about what everyone would say -"

"Because Stark is so concerned about being the center of attention." Natasha interjected sarcastically.

"Anyway," Clint pretended to glare at Natasha. "I think he's got a thing for military guys. First there was this guy, Rhodey -"

"He's still friends with Rhodey, Clint." Natasha sighed.

"And now there's you. I mean, when they pulled you out of the ice...I thought he was going to faint. He was crazed. He wouldn't shut up about all the stories he'd heard about you, all the medical tests that he'd need to do -"

"Medical tests?" Steve raised an eyebrow. "He hasn't done any medical tests."

"Not since you woke up." Clint replied with a grin.

Steve turned to look at Natasha inquisitively. If anyone in the car was going to tell him the truth, Natasha seemed like the most likely candidate. She noticed his stare and shrugged, her eyes never leaving the road.

"It wasn't anything too invasive."

"Great." Steve slumped back in his seat. "Anything else I should know about? Did someone dress me up while I was asleep? Did anyone give me any tattoos?"

"Well…" Clint said playfully.

"No." Natasha answered firmly. There was a smile on her face.

Clint made a face when he thought she wasn't looking. She noticed. Steve couldn't help but smile. He liked being around Natasha and Clint. There was a certain lightness about them that was almost addictive. He wasn't the center of attention when he was with them. He was just another part of the gang.

That feeling of lightness didn't last very long. Within a few short minutes, they were at Steve's apartment building.

"Here we are." Natasha said pleasantly. "You can text me if you ever need to go anywhere else. I know that spending time with Tony isn't always worth a free ride in a limo."

Steve climbed out of the car and turned around to look at Natasha through the window. He smiled awkwardly. "Thanks."

"No problem. I'll be seeing you, Steve."

"I'll tell Coulson you said hi!" Clint added as Natasha pulled away from the curb.

Steve chuckled as he entered his apartment building.

* * *

"For the last time, just put Bruce and I as your references." Tony complained as he paced the length of Steve's cramped living room. Steve looked up from the online application that he was working on and shook his head.

"It says no family friends."

"Okay, then we're not friends. I think that you're a stupid vigilante superhero who should work for the government and wear suits to work." Tony said in an exasperated tone, rolling his eyes and staring up at the ceiling in frustration.

Steve crooked a smile. "I haven't been a vigilante for a long time, Tony."

"I don't know if I'd say that. You fought a war on hypothermia all by yourself."

"Hm. I guess that's true. Maybe I should report to the government."

"I don't think I'd actually do that. I don't trust the government as a general rule."

"You really are Howard's kid."

"Exactly. I'm Howard Stark's rich and influential son. I could get you into any school in the country. Just put my name down as a reference."

"No, Tony."

"Who, then? Your address book isn't exactly full."

"My address book? And you accuse me of being outdated." Steve smirked.

"Don't try to be cute with me; you're being stupid. You have no other references. You haven't worked in over sixty years and you have spoken to maybe ten people since you were thawed out. Who else could you possibly put down as a reference?"

"What about Coulson?"

"Absolutely not. Why would you even consider him?"

"I don't know...I helped him lift a few boxes the other day. Doesn't that count as work?"

"He's in love with you."

"So he'll write a good reference."

"Just put my name."

Steve hesitated, his fingers hovering above his keyboard. "You won't...try to bribe anyone, will you?"

Tony let out a lengthy sigh. He ran a hand through his hair and continued staring at the ceiling for about thirty seconds before finally meeting Steve's gaze. "Do you want me to?"

Steve shook his head.

"Then I won't."

Steve thought it over for a moment before sighing. "Fine."

"And use Bruce for your other reference."

Steve glared at Tony without much malice. "What do you think that I should write my essay on?"

Tony shrugged. "What about Roosevelt? That guy's probably your hero, right?"

"It has to be a personal essay."

"Alright, then write about your experience during the war."

"Yeah, I don't think the admissions board is going to believe that I served in World War II."

"Then write about your moral compass, I don't know." Tony grumbled.

"That's...not a bad idea." Steve tapped his chin with his pencil.

Much to Tony's chagrin, he had been writing out his essay drafts with a pencil and paper. He was still much too slow at typing to write a whole essay on the computer.

Tony rolled his eyes and picked up a nearby book to distract himself from the vision of a human being using a pencil and paper in the 21st century.

* * *

Steve woke up to the sound of heavy knocking on his door. He snatched up the baseball bat lying halfway under his bed and emerged from his bedroom cautiously. The knocking sound continued at the front door.

"Steve!" Tony's muffled voice rang out. "Steve, open the damned door. You got in!"

Steve sighed and tossed the baseball bat aside. He ran a hand through his messy hair and approached the door.

"Tony, it's six in the morning."

Tony didn't seem to care. The moment that Steve opened the door, he pushed past him. He turned around and beamed, waving a huge yellow envelope over his head. Steve put his hands on his hips and waited for Tony to explain himself. Noticing Steve's annoyed expression, Tony lowered his arms and cocked his head to the side.

"You weren't actually sleeping, were you?"

"Of course I was."

Tony looked genuinely surprised. "You actually sleep at this time? Huh."

"You probably should, too." Steve reminded him with a fond smile. "Knowing you, you haven't slept since last Tuesday. What is this, anyway?" He took the envelope from Tony's hand and looked it over inquisitively. It had NYU's logo on it.

"It's an acceptance letter. Your mailbox is just full of them. I only grabbed this one because I know it's your first choice."

"It is." Steve confessed, staring down at the envelope in disbelief. He didn't bother asking how Tony got ahold of his mail.

"Aren't you going to open it?" Tony asked impatiently.

Steve nodded numbly. He took a steadying breath before tearing open the envelope. He pulled out a huge glossy envelope and pulled a few sheets out of it. After scanning the first sentence of the first page, his entire face lit up.

"I got in."

"You got in?" Tony sounded incredulous despite the fact that he had been the one bursting into the apartment assuring Steve that he had gotten in. Steve was too excited to focus on that particular detail. He nodded dumbly and continued smiling.

"That's awesome! C'mon. We've got to go celebrate. I'll call Romanoff in the car. She's been asking me whether or not you've gotten accepted every day."

"Romanoff?"

"Natasha."

"Oh. She has?" Steve hadn't spoken to Natasha since she had dropped him off at his apartment. His cheeks reddened against his will.

Tony snorted and rolled his eyes. "Don't bother. She's not interested. As long as I've known her, she's only had eyes for that sidekick of hers, Barton."

"Is that Clint?"

"Yeah."

"Then why is she asking about me?"

Tony shrugged. "Because she cares. There aren't a lot of good people out there, you know. It's nice to be able to root for someone that deserves to succeed; even if you don't really know them that well."

"I don't know if I'm nearly as good as you all seem to think I am." Steve confessed. He had been thinking about that for some time, now. Everyone that he met seemed to put him up on a pedestal without even glancing at his past records. Steve was frequently concerned that the pedestal would come crashing down at his feet the moment that someone looked at him for just a second too long.

Tony clapped Steve on the back and shook his head. "That's what makes you so good. Only good people worry about whether or not they're good. Bad people just assume that they are."

"Hm." Steve wasn't so sure.

"Anyway," Tony said gruffly. "Now isn't the time to discuss morals. You just got accepted into NYU. We have to celebrate! I'll assemble the gang while you get changed."

"What's wrong with this?" Steve complained.

"Khakis and a t-shirt don't exactly say 'celebration'." Tony replied. "You're a college student now. You're going to have to learn to start dressing properly for parties."

* * *

 **Yesssss, my son is going to NYU! I wonder what kind of trouble he's going to get into. I wonder who he's going to meet. I wonder what his professors are going to think about him.**

 **Actually, I already know all of that information, but you know. I've got to set some kind of tone for the next chapter, right? Anyhow, I've got some free time on my hands, so I'll hopefully be able to finish this thing fairly quickly. In the meantime, leave any spare favorites/follows/reviews that you might have laying around!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Move-in Day**

"You sure you're up for this?" Tony asked for what must have been the millionth time in the duration of the car ride to the retirement home. Steve forced himself to smile and nod. Tony was just trying to look after him.

"Yeah. I want to talk to her before I go."

"She might not remember who you are."

"I know."

"And getting upset will only make her upset."

"I got it."

"Okay." Tony didn't sound too certain.

Still, as Happy pulled into the parking lot, Tony did his best to put on a smile. They climbed out of the car and started in the direction of the doors. Once inside, the receptionist recognized Tony and smiled.

"Here to see Peggy?"

Hearing her name come from someone else's mouth shocked Steve for some reason. He shivered. Tony glanced at him, concern written plain across his face. Steve forced himself to straighten his posture and nodded.

"Yeah. And I've brought my...ah...uncle."

Steve disguised his laughter as a cough. Despite the fact that Tony called Peggy "Aunt Peggy," being called an uncle seemed so bizarre. Tony was twice his age and knew a lot more about things than Steve did. Even so, had Steve been able to live out the life he had been on track to live, he would have been Tony's uncle for all intents and purposes.

"Your uncle." The receptionist didn't seem to believe him.

"Sure." Tony answered firmly. "He and Peggy were...you know…" He clicked his tongue meaningfully. " _You know_ , back in the forties when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth."

"Uh- _huh_." The receptionist stared at Steve like he had lost his mind.

"This is Captain America." Tony finally blurted out.

Steve rolled his eyes. He had been expecting that.

The receptionist's eyes widened. "Oh, of course. Right. Yes. Peggy has talked about you before we just…"

"Thought I was dead. Yeah, I get that a lot." Steve wanted to complete the conversation as quickly as possible.

"Can we see her now?"

"Of course. I'll let her know that she has company." The receptionist picked up the phone on her desk and nodded towards Steve and Tony emphatically.

Steve followed Tony through the narrow, poorly lit hallways that led to Peggy's room. All around him, elderly men and woman went about their day-to-day business. He couldn't help but look around and remind himself that had things been different, he would have been one of them. He would have been the old man cackling over a game of checkers; he would have been the woman scowling down at the newspaper and complaining about sleazy politicians. There was a small twinge of regret at the pit of his stomach.

"Here we are." Tony's statement snapped Steve out of his thoughts. Instead, he focused on the fact that they were about to walk through the door to Peggy's room.

It was surreal.

Peggy was old, to be sure, but she still looked like Peggy. She still had those two big, beautiful doe-eyes that Steve had never been able to resist, her hair was still curled around her face, and her mouth was still curved into that tight-lipped smile that made Steve smile whether he wanted to or not.

Steve held his breath and hoped that Peggy would recognize him.

Her eyes flicked over to him for a fleeting moment.

Her stare was full of recognition.

This was it.

Steve grinned.

"Tony."

Steve's grin evaporated.

"Hey, Aunt Peggy." Tony approached Peggy's bed and plopped down into one of the chairs next to it. Steve followed after him awkwardly. Peggy didn't even look at him as he sat down right next to her.

"How are you today? Are you enjoying this weather?"

"Yeah, it's great." If Tony was bothered by the fact that Peggy had not even acknowledged Steve, he was amazing at disguising it.

Peggy clucked her tongue. "Just like your father. You know, on days like these he would go right down to the dock and rent the first fishing boat that he could find. He would throw the most lavish parties on the most disgusting boats. Oh, we would all go, of course, and it was a great deal of fun, but I was always terribly worried that Howard was going to fall right into the water and we would be stuck on that gruesome boat forever."

Steve chuckled. "I remember those parties. I saw him fall in once. Bucky and I had to jump in after him. The water was freezing. I thought his mustache was going to fall off in one clump of ice."

Peggy's eyes darted over to Steve. She smiled a beautifully sentimental smile before returning her attention to Tony.

"Wait." Tony turned around to look at Steve, his mouth crooked into an amused smirk. "You had to rescue him? He always told me that he was a great swimmer."

"Great swimmer?" Steve echoed with a laugh. "No. It was like we were pulling a cat out of the ocean. I thought he was going to claw Bucky's face off."

Steve risked another look at Peggy. She was staring right at him. Her entire face had contorted into a look of pure shock. He squirmed in his seat and tried to smile at her.

"Tony," Peggy didn't look away from Steve. "You...you see him, too?"

The tone of pure disbelief was damn near heartbreaking. Steve's smile gentled.

Tony looked from Peggy to Steve uncertainly. "Who, Steve? Yeah, I see him."

"Steve?" Peggy's voice had dropped down to a whisper. She reached out a hand hesitantly. Steve reached out his own hand and allowed her palm to run over the back of his hand. Her fingers tightened around his wrist.

"Steve." She whispered again. "You're...alive?"

"I'm a little surprised, too." Steve assured her softly.

"Oh Steve." Tears welled up in Peggy's eyes. Steve forced himself to continue smiling. "It's been so long."

"Too long."

"Well," Tony interjected. "This is extremely awkward. I think that I'm going to go; let you two catch up a little bit. I'll see you next Sunday, Aunt Peggy."

Peggy didn't look away from Steve as Tony left the room. Steve didn't look away from Peggy.

"How are you here?" Peggy finally asked.

"I...I don't really know." Steve admitted. "Tony could probably explain it better than I could. I went under the ice, I guess I got frozen, and then someone found me. Now I'm here."

"How long have you been…?"

"A few weeks." Steve felt guilty for not visiting Peggy sooner. "I would've come sooner, but Tony was trying to get me up to date with everything and I've been applying to schools, and -"

"Steve." Peggy smiled and shook her head. "You don't have to justify yourself to me. But...school?"

"Yeah, I'm going back. Seems like something I should do."

Peggy smiled. "Oh, I sympathize for teachers everywhere."

Steve laughed. "I won't be that bad."

"No, I don't think that you will be." Peggy agreed. "You have always been well-behaved. Except when blonde women corner you in a bunker."

Steve let out an amused sigh and hung his head. "You can't still be mad about her."

Peggy smirked slightly. "Count yourself lucky that they won't allow me to carry weapons in here."

"Aw, Peg," Steve smiled. "Come on. You've lived a life; you got married, had kids...raised Tony. You can't still be worried about what's-her-name."

"Lorraine."

"Peg." Steve persisted, still smiling.

"I know, I know. I have lived a life." Peggy conceded. "I just wish that you could have lived yours."

"I'm going to try to start doing that from now on."

"Yes, but…" Peggy looked away. "I do wish that you could have lived your life with me."

"Yeah, me too."

"Hey, Steve? I don't mean to be a buzzkill, but dorm check-ins are in about an hour and Happy says traffic is really jamming up. If you want to make it in time to avoid a late fee, we need to get going." Tony popped his head into the room with an apologetic frown.

"Oh, right." Steve hung his head. There was never enough time in the world to spend with Peggy. "I should get going, then. I...ah…" He glanced back at Tony awkwardly for a moment before smiling at Peggy sheepishly. "I love you, Peg." He ducked down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

Peggy stared up at him for a moment before a smile broke across her face. "I love you too."

Steve wished that he had been able to hear those words long before he had gone under the ice for sixty six years, but it sounded just as good now as it would have sounded then. He grinned down at her for a moment before following Tony out of the room.

"So…" Tony seemed to be struggling with the phrasing of a question that Steve just knew was coming. "Are you guys...I mean...not that there's anything wrong with...but...you don't exactly look…"

"Tony." Steve put him out of his misery by interrupting. "It isn't like that."

"Thank God." Tony sighed. "I thought that I was really going to have to start calling you my uncle."

* * *

"Okay, I'll just need you to fill out these forms and get them back to me sometime by the end of the week. Here is your key." The RA offered Steve a key. Tony swiped it out of her hand before Steve could even reach for it. Steve rolled his eyes.

"I'll be making a copy of this." Tony said with a grin. Steve just chuckled.

"Why's that?" They began making their way through the crowded residence hall. Steve was carrying all of his bags. Tony was overseeing the process.

"What if you lock yourself out?"

"Isn't that what the RA is for?"

"Yeah, like SHIELD is going to let a stranger keep a key to your room. You could get murdered in your sleep."

"Why would anyone want to murder me? I don't even work for SHIELD."

"I don't know. Maybe to cut you open and figure out the super soldier serum. You might not work for SHIELD, but you're on their watchlist. You can be damn sure that you're on other watchlists, too."

Steve chuckled. "Why would anyone want to watch me? I don't do much."

"I don't know. Some people think you're special."

Steve cast Tony a sideways grin. "Do you think I'm special?"

Tony snorted and rolled his eyes. Steve grinned to himself.

As they approached the room that Steve had been assigned, they found two guys standing outside of the doorway. One of the guys was significantly younger than the other one - probably the college student. The other guy was smiling from ear to ear.

"Who are you?" Tony demanded. He didn't really have Howard's social graces.

The younger guy furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. "Russell. Are you Steve?"

Tony looked from Russell to Steve, his eyebrows knit and his mouth set in a frown. "No, that's Steve. What are you doing here?"

Steve set his bags down and pushed Tony aside gently. He stuck out his hand. "Hey man, I'm Steve. Sorry about Tony, he's -"

The older guy pointed at Tony, his face lighting up. "I knew it! You're Tony Stark!"

Tony let out a heavy sigh. He looked ready to call security on the poor guy. Steve cast him a stern look. Tony sighed and afforded the guy a completely fake smile.

"I'm sorry about him. Again." Steve said, nudging Tony with his shoulder. "He's had a long day. I'm Steve. Are you - ah - do you go -?"

The guy grinned. "Nah, I'm Russell's brother. Sam Wilson. Nice to meet you."

Steve couldn't help but smile back at Sam. His smile was contagious. His eyes radiated warmth and his posture was casual and easy. Steve liked him already.

"Ugh," Russell mumbled, picking up a duffel bag and casting Sam a dirty look. "Can't you do anything but stand there and talk to people?"

"Hey. I just got home from a tour with the damned air force. I deserve to stand around and talk to people."

"You were in the air force?" Steve asked. "Where did you serve?"

"Hey!" Tony interjected. "Why is that kid going into your room? Kid, that's Steve's room! Steve, he's going into your room!"

Steve hung his head and smiled. "I know, Tony. That's his room, too. He's my roommate."

"What?" Tony stared at Steve in horror. "Your roommate? You can't have a roommate! Do you really think that SH…" Tony looked at Sam for a moment before pulling Steve aside and lowering his voice to a frantic whisper. "Do you really think that SHIELD is going to let you live with a complete stranger? For all we know, he could be working for the KGB! He could be scoping out the room and daydreaming of ways to kill you."

Steve rolled his eyes. "You're being dramatic."

"You're being stupid."

"We can't all be geniuses."

Tony huffed. "Fury is going to be -"

"Furious?" Steve cracked a smile. Tony couldn't help but smile back.

"I'm going to stop by every once in awhile to make sure you're alive." Tony said. He made it sound like a threat. Steve knew that it wasn't.

"I'm going to miss you too, Tony."

"Yeah, well," Tony was clearly embarrassed by Steve's comment. "Come on. Let's get you moved in. You'd better hope that your roommate didn't take the good bed."

"I'm sure they're both equally fine, Tony." Steve laughed, picking up his bags and following Tony into the room.

In hindsight, Steve should have realized that Tony would inherit his father's dramatic flare. That did not stop him from being surprised when he walked into his room and was greeted with a setting that looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie.

Steve knew who to blame at once. "Tony."

"Consider it a going-away present."

Steve shook his head. "I can't accept all of this."

"I can!" Russell announced loudly. He had already made himself at home, sitting in a massive beanbag chair and flipping through the channels of the colossal TV mounted on the wall. Steve turned to face Tony.

"Looks like your roommate has spoken." Tony said triumphantly.

"At least let me pay you back."

"No way, this is a present."

"You furnished my entire room. That's hardly a present."

Tony shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking extremely uncomfortable. "Yes, well…"

Steve waited for him to finish. He knew that Tony wasn't always able to speak as freely as he might like to. He must have inherited that trait from his mother.

"Most of the kids here have a family to do this sort of thing. I just thought that since you…" Tony cleared his throat awkwardly. "Anyway, I thought that someone should do this for you."

Steve smiled. Tony may have been terrible at communication, but that didn't make his actions any less thoughtful. Sure, Steve might not have chosen the exact dorm setup that Tony had created, but Tony had clearly put a lot of time and effort into it. It was much more than Steve felt he rightfully deserved from Tony.

"Thank you."

Tony averted his eyes to the ground. "Uh-huh. Well, I should get back to the office. If I don't, Pepper will - uh, she'll just have it too easy. I like to challenge my employees."

"Of course." Steve could barely bite back a smile.

"Don't forget that I'll be checking on you. Making sure you're not on drugs."

"Looking forward to it."

"Right. And don't even think about skipping your classes. I have the password to your student account. I'll be able to see all of your grades."

"Yes, Tony."

"And I'll be keeping in touch with the police department. I'll have them out looking for a drunk super soldier every weekend. I'll know if you decide to join a frat." Tony was walking backwards down the hallway towards the stairwell, casting Steve a comically stern look. Steve couldn't maintain a straight face.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"And don't forget to eat fruit every once in awhile."

"Sure."

"And please call me or Bruce if you have trouble with your homework. There's no point in suffering in silence."

"You got it."

"And maybe try to -"

"Goodbye, Tony."

"Bye, Steve."

They exchanged small smiles before Tony finally ducked down the stairway. Steve turned around and returned to his room before he followed Tony out of the dorm. It was best to leave their goodbyes as they were. Neither of them were particularly good at expressing themselves adequately, after all.

Instead, Steve returned to his room. Maybe Russell and Sam could teach him how to use half of the technology that Tony had put in his apartment.

* * *

 **I DID NOT CRY WHEN TONY WAS DROPPING STEVE OFF, SHUT UP. Okay, yes I did. Only because I genuinely believe Tony would be so cute and considerate and caring to compensate for the fact that he probably had to be dropped off by his nanny when he went to college. Anyway, enough of my sadness. Steve is at school. And hey, he met Sam! That's exciting, isn't it? I think it is.**

 **As always, any likes/follows/reviews are much, much appreciated. I'm trying to move this story along as quickly as possible, but I'm also in the middle of editing a novel that I wrote. As in, a 400 page behemoth of a project. Woof. But! Getting notifications for this story snaps me out of that mindset and reminds me to take time to have fun and write something much less rigorous. So. Do your part. Make those notifications happen.**

 **I hope you're enjoying!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: First Day of School, First Day of School!**

"You've just got to watch out for icebreakers." Russell informed Steve as they piled their trays high with dining hall food. Steve turned his attention from the scrambled eggs to his roommate.

"Icebreakers?" He echoed inquisitively.

Russell nodded his head grimly. "They did them in high school, too. Teachers make you stand up and introduce yourself in front of everyone. They usually ask for some kind of fun fact or a narrative of what you did over the summer. They're awful."

"Yikes." Steve agreed, cringing. He was not particularly keen to tell all of his peers that he was over ninety years old and had been frozen in a block of ice while they lived out their completely normal lives. He hadn't even told Russell everything just yet. Luckily, Russell didn't ask very many questions.

"Yeah," Russell nodded glumly. "I've been trying to think of my fun fact all morning."

"What've you got so far?"

"My roommate is Captain America."

Steve choked on air. He turned to look at Russell in surprise. "You know?"

Russell laughed as they sought out a table in the dining hall. "Of course I know. There are hundreds of movies, TV shows, posters...I'd have to be an idiot not to recognize you. My grandpa collected your trading cards."

"Trading cards?" Steve hadn't heard about those. He had collected baseball trading cards as a kid. He would have liked to see his own trading cards.

Russell rolled his eyes. "Yeah, man. So now that we both know that I know, I've got a few questions for you."

Steve let out a sigh. "Let's have them."

"How do you still look so young?"

"Crashed a plane into some water and got frozen for a few decades."

"How did they thaw you out?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask Tony."

"Why did you want to go to college?"

"Well," Steve let out a heavy sigh and quirked a smile. "I've already had a career and seen the world. Finishing my education seemed like the next rational thing to do."

"Why'd you choose NYU? Shouldn't you go to some fancy school somewhere else? I bet Tony Stark could get you in anywhere."

"New York is my home."

"Do you have a supermodel girlfriend?"

Steve laughed. "No."

"Are you rich?"

"I don't know. Tony got me an accountant. He told me he'd handle my investments and tell me if I was spending too much."

"How many people have you killed?"

"I don't know. I try not to think about it."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I don't think so."

"But you're not sure?"

Steve shrugged and laughed. "I don't know. I can't predict the future."

"Are you single?"

"You're not really my type."

Russell huffed and rolled his eyes. "I'm not asking for myself."

Steve shrugged and stabbed at his hash browns. "Let's just say it's complicated."

"I'll let him know."

"Who?"

"Sam."

"Ah."

* * *

"So, as a way of getting to know each other better, I thought it would be fun to introduce ourselves. If you could all tell me your names, your major, and an interesting fact about yourselves, I'm sure I'll remember your names much better."

Steve gulped and looked around his first class of the day, Introduction to Drawing (or Art120, if you were comfortable with the course catalogue). He was getting strange looks from everyone. Even the professor - despite her best efforts - was having trouble keeping her eyes off of him. Steve felt very much on display and he did not like it one bit.

A string of students introduced themselves before Steve. There was a girl named Jamie who liked to go windsurfing, there was a boy named Asher who had just written his own book, there was a girl named Anna who had two adopted siblings...so on and so forth. The line of inquiry finally reached Steve. He had been so worried about the moment that everyone's eyes fell on him, that once they did, he realized that he had nothing at all to say.

"Uh...hi...I'm Steve," He mumbled, his face reddening. "I, uh, I'm studying art, and I...uh...I don't really know if I have an interesting fact."

"Nonsense! Everyone has an interesting fact." The professor protested immediately. It was extremely unhelpful.

"Like being Captain America." Someone whispered in the back. Steve's face turned a furious shade of scarlet.

The professor had obviously heard but decided to pretend that she had not. She clapped her hands together and forced herself to look at the skinny girl sitting next to Steve. Like Steve, the girl appeared mortified to be put on the spot. Steve was just relieved that his moment as the center of attention was over. For now.

The icebreaker lasted for about a half an hour. Class was dismissed afterwards. Steve couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that he hadn't gotten to draw anything yet. Everyone else, on the other hand, couldn't get out of the classroom fast enough.

As Steve walked through the city back to his dorm, he heard the faint sound of his phone ringing. That would be Tony, calling for the third time that day to ask him if he was maintaining a healthy diet, if he had made any new friends, or if he wanted to escape campus and visit Stark Towers for the weekend.

"Hello?" Steve could hardly keep the exasperation out of his voice as he answered.

"It's only the first week of school and you're already snapping? Hm. Good thing you don't have Dr. Banner's temperament." It was not Tony. It was a woman's voice. Specifically, Natasha the gorgeous redhead's voice. Steve's face reddened.

"Natasha. I'm sorry. I thought you were Tony."

"He's been calling you a lot, huh?"

"Like you wouldn't believe. What's up with him? He has other friends, doesn't he?"

"No, not really. It's mostly you and Rhodey."

"And he's lecturing me for not making friends." Steve shook his head and hoped that his tone was playful.

"Well, you can't blame him, there. From what I've seen, your social skills could use some improvement."

"Is that why you called me?" Steve couldn't help but feel nervous talking to Natasha. She was very difficult to read. She gave off no social cues and she always remained very aloof. She made Steve feel like he was ten steps behind every time she opened her mouth.

"As a matter of fact, it isn't. I was calling to ask what you're doing this weekend. Clint is away on a mission and I could use a gym buddy. Tony always complains that I'm cheating, Bruce doesn't really have the temperament for sparring, and Thor...he's not always available."

"Thor?"

"Oh, right. You haven't met everybody yet."

"'Everybody'?" Steve repeated stupidly.

He could practically hear Natasha's eye roll. "People like us have to stick together; you'll go crazy if you don't have some kind of outlet. I'm going crazy right now. So, how about it? Do you think you're up for the gym?"

"I, uh, sure?" Steve scratched the back of his head awkwardly and nearly elbowed somebody on the street. He smiled at them apologetically and glanced in the direction of his dorm. "When?"

"How about Saturday morning?"

"Yeah, Saturday. Great."

"Good. I can ask you all about your first week of classes then. Don't drink too much on Friday night. I want you in peak condition to spar with me. I want to see if I can beat the great Captain America."

"You got it." Steve couldn't help but smile.

"Perfect. See you Saturday." Natasha hung up her phone before Steve could say anything else.

Steve reached his dorm as he hung up his phone. He trudged up the stairs and unlocked his door. He found Russell and his brother, Sam, playing video games on their huge TV. Steve managed a smile before plopping down on his bed.

"How was class?" Russell called over his shoulder.

"Uhh," Steve groaned, burying his face in his pillow.

The sound effects of the video game stopped. Russell made a frustrated noise. Steve couldn't bring himself to remove his face from his pillow.

"Hey, Steve." Sam said.

"Hey, Sam." Steve mumbled into his pillow.

"Can we get back to the game now?" Russell demanded impatiently.

"Hang on a second. I didn't make it through the air force to listen to you complain over a video game." Sam responded.

"You can't use that as an excuse for everything." Russell protested.

"Sure I can, I made it through the air force." Sam countered.

"Whatever. I have to go to class anyway. Steve, just kick him out if he starts to get on your nerves." Russell said. Steve heard the rustling of his backpack, and a few seconds later, heard the door open and close.

"So…" Sam seemed interested in being social. Steve reluctantly removed his face from his pillow and focused on Sam. He was smiling. He was always smiling. "What's it like being surrounded by all of these kids?"

Steve made a dismissive noise and shook his head. Sam laughed.

"I know. They're brats, aren't they?"

"Russell's not bad," Steve replied. "I guess I just don't understand most of them. We don't exactly have shared life experiences. It's hard to relate to anything they say."

"That's fair." Sam agreed. "I get a lot of that, too. Every time I hear Russell complain about something like video games or the humidity outside, it's like -"

"There's a whole other world he doesn't get."

"Exactly." Sam grinned. "He doesn't know how bad it can really get. He doesn't know that there are much worse things than a low kill-ratio in a video game and a little bit of humidity in the mornings. He just takes everything and every _one_ for granted."

"Did you lose someone? When you were serving?" Steve recognized the look in Sam's eyes as he complained. It was distant, like he was visiting another time and place in his mind.

Sam smiled grimly. "My best friend, Riley. Happened right in front of me. How about you?"

"Yeah. My pal, Bucky. I was there, too. It's rough, man."

Sam nodded. "Sometimes I think that Riley got the better end of the stick, you know? He didn't have to live through it. He didn't have to wake up every morning and relive his best friend's death. He didn't have to hear fireworks on the fourth of July and jump to the conclusion that he was under attack. He didn't have to come back to the States and realize that it's like stepping into some kind of parallel universe."

"Sometimes I think that, too." Steve responded. "But then I see something incredible, like a movie that I'd missed, or a painting in a museum, and I wish he could see it, too. Like the Smithsonian exhibit a few months ago. They dug up an old picture of Bucky and put it on this massive wall. He _hated_ that picture. He'd always complain about it being in the papers. I would have given anything just to be there with him when he saw it. Just hearing him rant and rave about it, I just…" Steve swallowed hard and shook his head. "I miss him."

"Have you tried visiting his grave?" Sam asked gently. "I try to visit Riley when I'm feeling low. Makes it seem like he's not that far away."

"Can't. He fell from a train somewhere in Europe. If he's got a grave, it's an unmarked one. I've got no way to find him."

"I'm really sorry to hear that."

"I'll be okay." Steve lied. "I knew him once. That's enough."

Sam smiled sympathetically. "Well, hey. In the meantime, you want to take Russell's place?" He gestured towards the second video game controller. Steve smiled and shook his head.

"No, thanks. I'd just slow you down. I haven't really played many video games."

"C'mon. That's why you came to college, isn't it? To get more up to date with the world? What better way to do that than to jump right in and immerse yourself? I'll go easy on you, I promise."

"Fine." Steve agreed, unable to help smiling. "But you'd better not kill me before I even figure out how to shoot."

"You got it." Sam grinned.

* * *

 **Yes, that's right. Sam is here to stay. Mostly because Steve is stuck with Russell, and therefore, Sam. AND ALSO Natasha is here to stay. And to kick ass. Because that's what she does and she is the queen of everything.**

 **Thank you to everyone who's been reviewing - it really means a lot to me! And to those who are not reviewing - you're cool too, but hey, maybe I'd love you more if I knew you existed. Why don't we try that theory out? Leave a few words and I'll let you know!**

 **In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this chapter! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five: Five More Minutes, Mom.**

Up until enrolling in college, Steve had thought that nothing could be more exhausting than World War II. He was horrified to realize that he was wrong.

Not only did all of his professors institute a strict attendance policy - forcing him to attend around fifteen hours worth of class - they assigned homework and projects as though he only had one class to worry about. He had spent twenty hours on homework on his first week of school alone. He had also taken approximately five quizzes and turned in three online assignments. By the time Friday night rolled around, Steve wanted to do nothing but lay in bed and watch the Yankees game.

Russell had other plans.

"At least come out with us for a little while. You're all anyone is talking about right now! If girls see us showing up to a party with you, we'll be set for the year." Russell pleaded for the tenth time since dinner.

Steve chuckled and shook his head. "No way, man. I just don't have it in me. I'm not like you kids; I can't bounce back from all of that work at the drop of a hat. I need sleep."

"You're twenty-five. And you're a super soldier." Russell countered impatiently.

"Right now, I'm feeling closer to a hundred." Steve replied, stretching out and relaxing as Russell and his friends exchanged frustrated looks.

"Yeah, but dude, we're freshmen. No one is going to let us into a party. Not without someone cool in our group." Russell whined.

Steve cracked open an eye. "If you want to get into a party, just call Tony."

"Tony Stark? Do you think he'd let us into a party?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

"Without you?"

"Probably."

"Would you give me his phone number?"

"Sure, just check my phone. It's on my desk."

"Awesome, thanks, man!"

"Uh-huh." Steve waved off Russell's gratitude. "Now let me sleep in peace."

"Sure thing." Russell beamed, quickly copying Tony's phone number before leading his friends out of the room. The moment the room was silent, Steve sank into a deep and comfortable sleep.

That sleep lasted maybe thirty minutes before the sound of Steve's ringtone woke him up.

At first, Steve thought that he could just ignore the irritating chimes.

He was wrong.

Whoever it was that was calling him was persistent. Steve let out a loud groan and clamored for his phone. He could reach his desk from the end of his bed, but the fact that he had been forced to leave the warmth of his covers made the journey seem unreasonable. He groaned again when he saw that it was Tony calling him.

"Do you ever sleep?" He demanded by way of answering.

"Why is your roommate here?" Tony responded. His voice was muffled by the sound of loud music and chattering voices. "I was trying to have a decent party and now Pepper has to babysit a bunch of eighteen year olds."

"Oh." Steve ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Sorry. That's my fault. I just wanted to get him out of the room for a while so I could sleep. Don't you think you could entertain them? Maybe show them to the game room or something?"

"This is my house, not Chuck E. Cheese." Tony snapped back.

"Chuck E. What?" Steve asked with a laugh.

"Look," Tony sighed. "I'm not your babysitter. If you want to sleep, why don't you just stay at the Tower for the weekend?"

"I'm trying to get the college experience."

"The college experience doesn't involve a whole lot of sleep. Trust me on that one."

"Fine." Steve sighed. "But you're going to have to be the one to tell him that he can't stay."

"Me?" Tony sounded horrified. "Why do I have to do it?"

"It's your party."

"He's your roommate!"

"Goodnight, Tony."

"Wait, no, I'm not finished ta-"

Steve clicked the "end call" button before Tony could complete his argument. He was too tired to argue with Tony. He just burrowed back in his bed, hoping to be asleep by the time that Russell and his friends returned to the dorm room.

* * *

Steve was awoken by the sound of his phone.

Again.

This time, though, it was light outside. It was morning.

"Argh." Russell mumbled from the other side of the room, covering his head with his pillow. "Answer it."

"Mmm." Steve grumbled, scrambling for his phone and holding it up to his ear. "Hello?"

"You're late."

It was Natasha.

The gym.

Shit.

"Ah. Natasha. I'm sorry. I guess I got a late start this morning. I'll be downstairs in a minute, just let me find my shoes -"

There was a knock at the door. Russell let out a loud noise of complaint. Steve placed his hand over the phone's microphone and dashed for the door. He fully expected it to be Tony insisting that they go out for brunch or visit some foreign country. Instead, it was Natasha, wearing that same grin that always disoriented him. Steve forced himself to smile.

"Hey." He hit the "end call" button on his phone and tossed it back on his bed.

"Just looking for your shoes, huh?" Natasha asked, looking him up and down with an amused grin. Steve smiled sheepishly.

"You caught me. I overslept. I'll be ready in a minute, I swear." Steve replied. He stepped aside to let Natasha into the room while he looked around for clean clothes and shoes. Russell's annoyed demeanor immediately changed as Natasha made herself comfortable sitting on Steve's bed.

"Hello there." Russell grinned at Natasha. He looked a little bit like Sam when he smiled that way. "How are you?"

"Hey," Natasha smiled back at him. It wasn't a particularly friendly smile, but it wasn't cold either. It conveyed the message that she was not interested, but she wasn't hostile about that fact.

Steve cast Russell a grin before changing out of his pajamas. He should have known that Russell would try to chat Natasha up. Had Sam been around, he probably would have, too. Steve couldn't blame them for that. Natasha was just one of those people that couldn't go anywhere without attracting attention. He wondered how that impacted her career as an agent.

He quickly shrugged on a clean t-shirt and wiggled into a pair of shorts while Russell attempted to flirt with Natasha. He had no qualms with changing in front of both Russell and Natasha. He had been in the military, after all. He was used to changing in front of all sorts of people.

"Are you ready yet?" Natasha asked impatiently.

"Just about. Do I need to bring my wallet?"

"Are you planning on buying the gym?"

Steve looked over his shoulder at Natasha. She was smirking at him. He smirked back.

"They usually need to see an ID, don't they? You need an ID to go anywhere these days."

"Nah, I know the owner of the gym. It won't be a problem." Natasha replied. "Now hurry up. I said Saturday morning, not Saturday night."

"It's seven in the morning; I think that we'll be okay."

"Haven't you slept enough for a lifetime? Why didn't you wake up earlier?" Natasha demanded as Steve toed on his shoes.

"School is a lot harder than I thought it'd be." Steve answered. "I needed some time to recover."

"You're a super soldier. You're supposed to recover twice as fast. Are you ready yet?"

"Yes, Natasha. I'm ready." Steve sighed, pretending to be exasperated with her impatience. Really, though, he liked it. It was familiar. Bucky had always been trying to rush him to and from places. He hardly gave Steve time to put on clothes before he was whisking him off to various destinations. Natasha's complaining made him feel just a little bit at home.

"Good. The car's downstairs."

"We're driving? I thought we'd walk."

Natasha rolled her eyes as they exited the dorm room. "People like us can't really walk around the streets, Steve."

"Right." Steve wasn't used to all of the security precautions being thrown at him. The twenty-first century seemed like an exceptionally unsafe place. "So, what kind of workout are we doing today?"

"Boxing." Natasha replied brightly. "I thought I'd throw you around the ring a few times. No better way to get you back in the game, right?"

"Back in the game?" Steve echoed, his mouth tilting into a slight smile. "I'm not getting back in anything. I'm just trying to make it through school."

Natasha shrugged and smiled. "Well, yeah, but that's only going to last for, what? A year? I know that Tony put you on the fast track for graduation. You're going to have to find something to do once you're out."

"And you think that I'm going to fight again."

"I do."

"Why?" Steve wasn't offended by Natasha's assumption, just curious. She hadn't spent very much time with him, but she sure seemed to know a great deal about him. Maybe she was right about the fighting.

"Because it's all you know." Natasha replied matter-of-factly. "Fighting is the only thing that you have left from the old days. You're a clinger, Steve. You're going to cling on to that one tie to the past with all you have."

Steve suddenly wished very much that he hadn't asked.

"But school is nice, too." Natasha added in an effort to lighten the atmosphere.

"Yeah," Steve sighed, accepting the boxing tape that Natasha handed him. "School is nice, too."

* * *

 **Okay, I don't really know what this is. Maybe it's just self-pity because I am always worn out by school. Maybe I just wanted more bonding time with Natasha. Maybe I'm just trying to work up to something bigger and better. Maybe it's a combination. Who knows? Not me! (I do know. It's a combination. Just you wait. Super exciting things are going to be happening very soon.)**

 **As for the wonderful reviews that you guys are leaving: I love them. They're perfect. They keep me writing. That's never a terrible thing. So if you feel so inclined, leave a review on this chapter. Maybe it'll make the delay between updates shorter this time. Maybe. I don't know. I'm so slow.**

 **Anyhow, I'm off to interview for an internship I am semi-qualified for, so wish me luck and enjoy Chapter Five!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six: Thanksgiving Break**

Steve Rogers was addicted to coffee.

The caffeine only affected him for a short while - he had his fast metabolism to thank for that - but the buzz was great while it lasted. By the time that midterms neared, Steve had gone through an entire case of Keurig cups.

"Have you studied for your art history exam yet? Wade said his was rough." Russell commented as he and Steve went on yet another coffee run. It was the weekend before midterms and Steve was not ready.

"Not yet. I'm still trying to finish reading all of the short stories my English professor assigned. How about you? Do you feel ready?" Steve asked glumly. Russell seemed much better at school than he was. He knew how to study, he knew how to ration his time, and he always seemed to have a friend that knew about the contents of exams.

"Sure. Half my exams aren't until after Thanksgiving, anyway." Russell replied with a shrug. Steve glared at him, though it didn't have much bite to it.

"Lucky." He grumbled.

"Not really." Russell reasoned. "You get to relax and enjoy your break. I have to spend mine studying. Sam is probably going to be an asshole about it, too. He's always terrible on Thanksgiving. I'm guessing Tony Stark isn't much better, though. You're spending break with him, aren't you?"

"Oh, uh." Steve had not thought past midterm week. It was only now that he realized that he hadn't made Thanksgiving plans at all. He knew that Peggy would be spending the holiday with her grandchildren, so she was out of the question. Tony probably had some fancy, lavish plans with his rich upper-crust friends, so he was most likely out of the question as well. Natasha and Clint undoubtedly had their own holiday ritual, and Steve did not want to be the outsider sitting in on that. That left no one at all for him to spend the holiday with.

"I don't know." He murmured at length. "I guess I hadn't really thought about it."

"Really?" Russell didn't seem to notice Steve's sudden silence. "It's all I'm thinking about. It's the only thing keeping me sane right now."

"Hm." Steve nodded, his thoughts straying elsewhere.

* * *

"So what time should Happy pick you up from campus on Friday?"

"What?" Steve looked up from his pho and focused on Tony. Tony glanced up from his lettuce wraps and furrowed his eyebrows. He looked at Steve like he had lost his mind.

"Friday. Happy is picking you up. Why? Did you want Nat to get you? I can see if she's available, but I don't know if she'd appreciate being used as a chauffeur." Tony replied, rolling his eyes and returning his attention to his food.

"No, I mean...why is Happy picking me up on Friday?" Steve didn't want to assume that Tony was offering to host him over the brief Thanksgiving break. It was far more likely that Tony thought he was babysitting JARVIS or something equally ridiculous.

"For Thanksgiving," Tony continued to look at him like he was insane. "You're spending Thanksgiving at my place, aren't you?"

" _Oh_!" Steve couldn't disguise his surprise. "Oh, ah, yeah, sure. I can...I can do that. I just thought that maybe you'd - you know - have something better to do, like visit a secret island with a plane full of dames, or -"

"Or go to a real clambake in my favorite speakeasy?" Tony taunted with a toothy grin.

Steve rolled his eyes and stabbed at a piece of chicken floating in his soup. "Shut up."

"Hey there, young man. Don't go around talking to people that way. They might think you're a bad egg."

Steve let out an exasperated sigh, but couldn't help smiling. "Which word was it this time?"

After Steve called a grilled cheese sandwich with apple slices in between layers of cheddar, "the bees knees," Tony had forced him to start a notebook titled: Things No One Says Anymore. It seemed that something that Steve had said would have to be written down just beneath the word "spiffy".

"Dame," Tony answered, leaning back in his chair and smirking to himself. "Did women really like being called dames back then? It seems a little - I don't know - archaic."

"Everything seems archaic to you." Steve bit back good-naturedly, pulling the notebook out of his backpack and jotting down the word "dame" before continuing. "Your body might be stuck in the twenty-first century, but your mind is in the thirtieth century."

"Hm. I guess our minds are ten centuries apart, then."

"I guess so."

"Well," Tony waved it off. "That just makes for interesting conversation, which we'll have at Thanksgiving dinner. You're coming, right? I think that's where we landed on that."

"Yeah, I'm coming." Steve chuckled to himself.

He couldn't help but feel overwhelmingly relieved that he had somewhere to go for Thanksgiving.

* * *

Steve's temporary relief over his sorted out Thanksgiving plans was just that: temporary. As is always the case for college students, his relief quickly gave way to crippling anxiety. The exams were fast approaching and he felt nowhere near prepared.

Steve's experience with taking the SAT was a prime indicator that he was not a good test-taker. He was anxious, he was impatient, and he was insecure about his intelligence. Being friends with geniuses like Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff only exacerbated those insecurities. Tests also did not help. So when it came time for him to sit down and take a midterm exam for each one of his classes, he was an absolute and total wreck.

Like Russell had predicted, his art history exam was the worst. There were questions on that exam that made Steve question his knowledge of the English language. Some of them were just senseless; no matter how many times he re-read them, he didn't understand what question the professor was trying to ask.

By Friday afternoon, Steve Rogers felt like a complete and total jellybean. He truly believed that he had failed all of his exams, effectively ruining his chances of graduating in only a year's time. He was too ashamed of himself to even think about facing his professors after Thanksgiving break. They likely thought that he was an idiot.

"How'd you do?" Russell asked when Steve returned to the dorm room with his figurative tail between his legs. Sam was there too, apparently helping him pack.

"Ugh." Steve groaned by way of answering.

"That bad, huh?" Russell cast him a sympathetic smile before returning his attention to packing.

"Yeah, that bad." Steve answered grimly. "Think it's too late to drop out?"

"Aw, c'mon. You couldn't have done that bad. Just relax and have fun over break. It won't seem as bad when you're surrounded by women on Tony Stark's private yacht."

Steve rolled his eyes and chuckled. "I don't think Tony has a yacht."

"But there'll be women, right?" Russell persisted.

"Maybe his assistant Pepper, but I don't think -"

"You're spending Thanksgiving with Tony Stark?" Sam interjected.

"Yeah." Steve ran a hand through his hair before setting to work packing up his own belongings.

"That must be weird for you, huh?" Sam asked, abandoning Russell in order to cross over to Steve's side of the room. Russell let out a frustrated huff of air but continued to pack without a word.

"What do you mean?" Steve questioned.

"Well," Sam shrugged with a sheepish smile. "I'm guessing you probably had real traditional Thanksgivings back in the day. Going from that to dinner with Tony Stark seems like a big difference. The dude isn't exactly traditional. I bet he cuts the turkey with a light saber."

"If there even is a turkey." Russell chimed in.

"I don't know." Steve shrugged, a smile playing on his lips. His tests were forgotten for that moment in time. It was nice. "I wouldn't really say that I celebrated holidays in any sort of traditional way back then, either. The last Thanksgiving I had, I was laying low in Le Chambon. They had me staying in a barn with a few goats."

"Was there at least turkey?" Sam inquired hopefully.

"Nuh-uh. It was the middle of the war. There wasn't a turkey to spare."

"Were there at least women?" Russell asked.

"Ah," Steve scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Not really. It was a small village. I think there might have been one dame - ah, woman - around my age, but she didn't really pay much attention to me. I smelled like a goat."

"Sounds shallow to me." Sam laughed.

"Yeah, well," Steve smiled and shook his head. "I think she liked Bucky better, anyway. He was always much better with women than I was."

"I can believe that." Russell sniped.

"You're one to talk." Steve shot back. They both exchanged smirks before continuing their packing.

"So, wait. Let me get this straight: this girl chose some regular guy over _Captain America_? That doesn't sound right. Are you sure she wasn't trying to play hard to get?" Sam demanded incredulously.

Steve laughed. "I would hardly call Bucky a regular guy."

"What, did he have super powers too?" Russell asked eagerly.

"Sort of." Steve allowed. "It was impossible not to like him. He just had this magnetism about him. I don't know, I can't really explain it. If you met him, you'd know what I was talking about. Anyway, I couldn't really blame her for taking more of an interest in him than in me. I didn't really care, either. I was too busy to worry about dates."

"But now you're not." Sam pointed out. "Have you ever thought about dipping your toe in? Maybe taking someone out for dinner, maybe a movie…"

"Am I interrupting?" Tony inquired from the doorway, eying Sam curiously. Sam just smiled back at Tony.

"Nope." Steve answered. "We were just talking about my last Thanksgiving. It won't be too hard to beat, so long as you don't set me on fire. Again."

Steve was referring to the last time that he had agreed to help Tony in the lab.

Tony groaned. "How many times do I have to apologize for that? I didn't know that Dum-E would drop the match!"

"Don't blame Dum-E; he was just following your instructions."

"You're kidding, right? He never follows my instructions!"

Sam and Russell exchanged looks before gathering up Russell's bags. It was obvious that they didn't want to get caught in yet another argument. Instead, they quickly collected Russell's belongings and made their way out of the dorm. Tony didn't so much as blink while they left.

"He's just a robot, Tony. He doesn't make decisions on his own." Steve chuckled as he picked up his own duffel bag. It was stuffed full of clothes and coffee. Steve figured that Tony could provide everything else that he would need throughout the break.

"That's what you think. I'm working on artificial intelligence as we speak, and Dum-E is my first - and worst - attempt yet." Tony replied. He began to explain the intricate details of artificial intelligence, but Steve did not have the mental capacity to pay much attention to his words. Every time Tony started to ramble about science and mechanics, Steve automatically zoned out. Tony never seemed to notice.

"Anyway," Tony was finally giving up on trying to explain Dum-E's programming. "I guess that means that you're not going to be helping me in the lab anymore."

"That's exactly what that means." Steve chuckled, tossing his bag into the trunk of Tony's fancy car before hopping in the passenger's seat. Tony let out a disappointed sigh as he slid into the driver's seat.

"Then pray tell, what are your plans for the break? Are you just going to jitterbug around the house? Maybe make some bathtub gin?"

Steve shook his head, unable to bite back a smile. "I think I'll just read a book or two."

"Boring." Tony declared. "We should do something more interesting than sit around and read. We should socialize. We should have fun. We should assemble the Avengers."

"The who?" Steve arched an eyebrow, wondering if the Avengers were some boy band that was gaining popularity. Boy bands seemed awfully popular these days. "Why are we assembling them?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "The Avengers are Earth's mightiest heroes put together in one collective group for the purpose of protecting mankind. You should really know more about it; you're on the shortlist for joining."

"What? No. I never wanted -"

Tony shrugged, not taking his eyes off of the road. "You signed up to be a military lab rat. As a result, they get to do what they want with you. Right now, they want you to be an Avenger."

"Are the Avengers just a bunch of people like me?" Steve couldn't deny that he was hopeful. It would be nice to get to know people that went through experience similar to his own. It would be nice to compare things like recovery times, weaknesses to certain strains of viruses, and rates of metabolization with people like him. It would be nice to know that he wasn't alone.

"Nope, sorry." Tony laid those hopes to rest.

"Then who are they?"

Tony glared at him half-heartedly. "Half the people you know. Natasha, Clint, Bruce…"

"You?"

"I'm the leader."

"That's not really a selling point, if you're trying to get me to join."

Tony's mouth just crooked into a smirk. "Just wait 'till you meet them. You'll join."

* * *

About four hours after they arrived at Stark Tower, the Avengers began to arrive.

First there was Natasha and Clint, who showed up together with a dog named Lucky. Natasha ruffled Steve's hair and asked him how school was going. Clint introduced him to the dog and then asked Tony if he had ordered pizza yet. Steve assumed that meant they were having pizza for dinner.

Next was Bruce. Natasha and Clint greeted him briefly, but he disappeared to the lab before long. Steve knew better than to take it personally. Bruce preferred to be alone. It wasn't a reflection on those surrounding him, it was just a personality trait.

Pepper and Rhodey showed up before long, carrying ten massive boxes of pizza. Tony assured Steve that they were not in the Avengers, they just liked joining in the festivities. Pepper overheard and thumped the back of Tony's head. Rhodey told Steve countless stories about times where he saved Tony's ass.

About a half hour into the party, there was a loud crashing sound outside. Steve jumped to his feet, ready to defend himself and his new friends at the drop of a hat. Tony, on the other hand, just rolled his eyes and let out a loud groan.

"You can sit down, Steve," He said. "That's just Thor, fucking up my lawn. Again."

"Thor?" Steve had heard his name in passing on various occasions, but had yet to meet him.

"You called?" A deep, haughty voice came from the kitchen. A massive man donning armor and what looked like a red, velvet cape walked through the screen door in the kitchen. He looked at Steve quizzically. "Who are you?"

"I'm Steve. Rogers. Who are you?" Steve's question was aimed at Tony. He looked to Tony for some kind of explanation. He wasn't sure that he would believe anything that the caped man said.

"I am Thor, son of Odin." The caped man - the infamous Thor - answered.

"Uh huh." Steve nodded before returning his attention to Tony. He really needed an explanation.

"He's one of the Avengers."

"You said that." Steve wasn't ready to trust Thor just yet. Judging from the look on Thor's face, he wasn't ready to trust Steve, either.

"Oh, please." Natasha interjected. "I've had it up to here with you brooding boys and your angsty rivalries. Thor, Steve is ninety-something years old and loves justice and America. He also eats a lot and could probably drink as much as you without passing out like the rest of us. Steve, Thor is a Norse god with a little shit of a brother. He likes dogs, drinking, and coffee. Discuss. Become friends."

Steve and Thor exchanged awkward stares. It felt like Steve was a five year-old getting set up on a play date with Bucky Barnes all over again. Still, that play date had resulted in a twenty-year friendship. Maybe this one wouldn't be so bad, either.

"I like dogs, too." He ventured.

Thor cracked a nervous smile. "Do you own a dog?"

Steve shook his head. "No. Do you?"

"No."

There was an awkward silence.

"I hate this." Clint decided after a moment. He looked around the room before escaping to the kitchen, where the awkward tension couldn't reach him. Tony looked like he was contemplating following.

"Hey Thor," Natasha drawled lazily. "I bet Steve could beat you up."

"He could not!" Thor objected immediately. The awkward tension dissolved almost immediately. It turned, instead, to a hostile tension. Steve glared at Natasha. She smiled back at him wolfishly. "He is much smaller than I."

"Wait a minute." Steve's attention was now diverted. "I'm not smaller than you."

Thor made a dismissive sound. "I am much taller and much stronger."

"No, you're not."

Thor took a step forward. A smug grin played on his lips. "Why don't we find out?"

Steve cracked his knuckles in turn, smirking back at Thor. "Sure. Name the time and place."

"Tony's basement." Thor challenged.

"No." Tony protested.

"Sure." Steve interjected.

"Let's go!" Natasha encouraged.

"I want to see!" Clint called from the kitchen.

* * *

"This is boring." Clint whined after nearly forty-five minutes of fighting.

As it turned out, neither Steve nor Thor was stronger than the other. While Thor had the power to summon thunder and lightning, Steve was much more agile. Thor had his hammer, Steve had his shield. Thor hit harder, Steve moved faster. They both had different skill sets, but they were about the same when it came to fighting capabilities.

Steve wasn't a bad sport. He never had been. So, recognizing that he could not win and would not lose, he set down his shield and stuck out his hand. He cast Thor a breathless smile that may have contained just a hint of admiration. Just a hint.

"Good fight." He said.

Thor set down his hammer and shook Steve's hand. "Good fight."

"Is it over?" Tony looked up from where he had begun an entirely new technologic project. "Is it finally over? Can we go eat pizza and do something that's actually interesting?"

"I think that was interesting." Steve protested, running a hair through his hair. It was now matted with sweat.

"Yeah, right." Tony rolled his eyes. "So, pizza?"

"Please." Clint agreed.

"Mm, yeah, alright." Natasha shrugged.

Steve and Thor exchanged looks.

"Pizza doesn't sound bad." Steve was speaking solely to Thor.

"I could eat." Thor shrugged. "Shall we order the thinned crust?"

Tony and Natasha groaned in unison. Steve looked around in surprise. Thor was smirking at Clint. Clint was looking at Thor like he had just slaughtered a field of puppies.

"You bastard." Clint whispered.

"Alright, I'm going upstairs. JARVIS, order the usual." Tony murmured, trudging up at the stairs with Natasha at his heels.

"Yes, sir."

Meanwhile, Clint launched himself straight at Thor. Thor was ready for the attack and promptly threw Clint down onto the ground. Clint didn't let that get to him; he just brought Thor right down with him.

"Never order thin crust pizza!" Clint growled as they wrestled and grappled at each other.

"The crunch is satisfying!" Thor snapped back.

Steve could only stand there and watch them, dumbfounded.

"It's not real pizza. It's a glorified chip." Clint shouted.

"I enjoy it." Thor responded.

"Steve!" Tony called from the top of the stairs. "Come on. They're going to be a while."

Steve took one last glance at Clint and Thor before climbing up the stairs. They sure looked like they could fight over their preferred type of pizza for a while.

"Do they always fight like that?" He asked as he reached the top of the stairs. He found Natasha draped across one of Tony's expensive chairs while Tony focused on some holographic video game that he and Bruce had programmed for fun.

"Only when we order pizza. Thor likes thin crust. Clint thinks that it's an atrocity." Natasha replied in a bored tone. She picked up one of Steve's textbooks and began to flip through it. Meanwhile, Clint's impassioned cries about the virtues of deep-dish pizza sounded through the tower.

"Uh-huh." Steve muttered, still not totally grasping why Thor and Clint were so passionate about pizza. "And they're part of the group that you want me to join?"

Tony paused his game to cast Steve a sheepish grin. "Yeah."

"Well." Steve planted his hands on his hips and looked around the room. "I guess I'll never be bored with you guys."

* * *

 **Okay, so I'm improvising. I just hate how distant the Avengers are in the movies. I mean really, did Thor talk to Clint ONCE in the entire MCU collection? Probably not. I'm making them all into people that know each other wayyyy too well. It is as it should be.**

 **I know I'm straying a little bit from Steve's academics, but winter is always a less academic time. There's Thanksgiving break, finals, and winter break. There isn't much time for academics. So don't be surprised when finals and winter break come next in a very rapid succession.**

 **In the meantime, enjoy my fictional children as they proceed. Hopefully Steve gets a lot of studying done over break, because finals are _not_ going to be easy for him...**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven: Welcome to the Avengers. Now Let's Go Save the World.**

 **(Fighting, Day 1)**

"How was your break?" Steve asked as Russell returned to the dorm room the Sunday night before classes were to resume. Sam was helping him lug all of his clean laundry back into the room.

"Short." Russell answered with a grin. "Can't wait for winter break. How about you? Did Tony Stark set you on fire again?"

"No, not this time." Steve replied with a laugh. "I was smart enough to stay out of the lab. Not smart enough to avoid getting caught up in a fight over the wishbone, though. Natasha can really pack a punch. Are you ready for your exams?"

"Ugh." Russell groaned, hauling the last of his clothes out from the hallway. He ignored Sam as he leaned up against the doorway. "No. I didn't get any studying done over break. I knew I wouldn't. And now I've got my midterms and my finals within three weeks of each other and I don't have a fucking clue what's going on in any of my classes."

"Language." Sam interjected.

"Fuck off." Russell grunted, plopping down on his bed.

"Three weeks. Jeez, I don't know if I'm ready for my finals, either." Steve murmured.

"You'll be fine." Sam reassured him. "Seems like all you do is study and work on homework. Did you have any fun over break? Did you see that football movie that you had been talking about?"

"Yeah. Tony and I saw it the day after Thanksgiving. He's got a private movie theater. It was nice, not having to worry about anyone recognizing us." Steve answered, setting up his textbooks on his bookshelf. He realized that his art history book was missing and frowned. Natasha had been flipping through it and asking him questions earlier in the weekend. He had probably left it with her.

"Oh. A private theater, huh? Hard to compete with that." Sam replied with a crestfallen smile.

Russell let out a loud sigh. "Sam, where is my lucky shirt?"

"What?"

"My lucky shirt. Did you leave it in the car?"

"I don't know." Sam raised an eyebrow at Russell. "I didn't even know that you had a lucky shirt."

"Well, we'd better check the car to make sure you didn't lose it. Now." Russell grabbed the sleeve of Sam's shirt and practically dragged him out of the dorm room. Steve arched an eyebrow but shrugged it off. It wasn't the strangest social interaction he'd seen that week.

Just as Russell and Sam thundered down the stairs, Steve's phone rang. He recognized the number immediately.

"Peggy." He smiled as he answered the phone. "Hey. I've been meaning to call you. I'm really glad we got to spend Thanksgiving together. How have you been since?"

* * *

"Fuck, man. I just don't get integrals." Russell complained for the nineteenth time in under an hour. Steve had been keeping track.

It was now the weekend before finals and neither Russell nor Steve were even moderately prepared for their finals. Steve was still trying to finish writing out flashcards so that he could start to study.

"I don't get art history." Steve countered grimly.

Russell turned around in his chair and afforded Steve a critical look. "Can't you call up Tony Stark and get him to tutor us? I bet he knows all about this shit."

"Art history? Probably not."

"No, integrals."

"How does that help me?" Steve joked.

Russell rolled his eyes. "Has anyone ever told you that you are profoundly selfish?"

"Oddly enough, no." Steve replied with a toothy grin. "You generally stop getting accused of selfishness after you give up your life in the service of your country."

"You and Sam." Russell disapproved, shaking his head. "Using your service as an excuse to act shitty. What would your friends think of you if they could see you now?"

Steve's heart seized up at the thought of Bucky. He had been doing so good; he had kept busy enough to keep his mind from lingering on the thought of Bucky for weeks now. It had been months since he had had his recurring nightmare about Bucky's fall. And in one second, Russell had brought him right back to square one.

"I don't know." He managed with a strained smile. "I don't think they'd be very surprised."

Just then, Sam burst through the door. He was covered in sweat, his eyes were wild with panic, and every muscle in his body was tensed. Steve jumped out of his chair and instinctively looked around for the cause of Sam's anxiety. Russell just watched them both in sheer confusion.

"There's - I - fucking - things." Sam spluttered incohesively.

Steve scolded himself for not knowing whether or not Sam's speech was a symptom of a stroke or a mental breakdown. Maybe both.

Just then, his cell phone rang. It was Tony. Steve's eyes flicked over to Russell.

"You got him?" He asked, nodding towards Sam.

Russell nodded and began asking Sam what he was so freaked out about. Sam didn't seem to listen. He just dashed across the room and opened the curtains. Steve turned his back to the scene and tried to tune out their voices as he listened for Tony on the other line.

"Tony?"

"Hey, Steve," Something about Tony's voice didn't sound quite right. "You remember how I mentioned that you're a member of the Avengers and all?"

"Yeah," Steve replied suspiciously.

"Well," Tony sounded almost apologetic. Almost. "It's time to suit up, buddy."

* * *

Aliens.

In New York.

Lead by a Nordic demigod.

Thor's brother.

"You're joking." Steve said for the fourth time.

"I wish." Tony answered for the fourth time.

"Thor, you're Loki's brother. What's his play?" Natasha asked, ignoring Steve and Tony in favor of watching Thor from across the briefing room.

"I do not know," Thor answered, biting his thumb anxiously. "Loki is beyond reason right now. It seems that a foreign species has promised him wealth and power. He means to capture midgard as a way of paying them back."

"Great," Clint mumbled sarcastically. "Just great. So Scar decides that he wants a crown to match Mufasa's and now we're in a stampede of wildebeests."

"What?" Steve and Thor asked in unison.

Sometimes Clint just made no sense at all.

"I don't think that we should be focusing on Loki," Bruce intervened. "The guy's brain is like a bag of cats. You can just smell the crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak of my brother," Thor warned him. "He is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard."

"He's killed thirty people in three hours." Natasha said.

"He's adopted." Thor reminded everyone.

"Anyway," Tony huffed. He did not like allowing anyone else to be the center of attention for too long. He was so like Howard in that regard. "We've got to do something. SHIELD headquarters are all the way in D.C., and by the time we get there, half the city will be dead. We've got to think fast, and we've got to act faster."

"The civilians." Steve offered first. "We've got to get them off of the street. Loki isn't trying to wage a war with them; it's us he wants, isn't it?"

Thor nodded slightly. He did not seem to like Steve's plan thus far. Steve was not too worried about it.

"Then that's our first move. Natasha and Clint, you're on the ground. You're going to move out and get the civilians out of fire. Tony, I want you to stop every subway train that you can. We need civilians down there with the gates locked. Thor, try to talk to Loki. This thing just got started. It's not too late for him to back down now."

"And I'll start looking for ways to offset the portal." Bruce volunteered, shrugging off his jacket and walking up to the lab area.

"And what are you going to do, Rogers?" Tony asked, looking Steve over appraisingly.

Steve cracked a small smile. "I'm going to do what I do best: assemble a team and hope like hell it works."

* * *

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because you're eighteen."

"You're only six years older than me."

"And in six years, you can fight aliens, too."

"Sam." Steve interrupted Russell and Sam's bickering impatiently. They didn't have much time to stand around squabbling. There was a very real chance that they would be shot to pieces at any given moment. "We've got to go. Russell, stay here and take care of your family. Keep them in the basement, and keep the door locked. Sam and I will come back here when the coast is clear."

Russell jutted out his chin as he took a step towards Steve. It was obvious that he did not like being left out of the fighting. Steve could sympathize with that. He had spent a majority of his adult life trying to get involved in any fighting that he could.

"Promise me that you'll bring him home." Russell challenged.

Steve looked over at Sam for a moment before looking at Russell. "You know I'll look after him, Russ, but I can't make you any promises. The world's in danger and he's one of the only people that I trust to help."

"Promise me." Russell persisted.

"For God's sake, just promise him." Sam groaned.

"Fine," Steve sighed. "I promise, I'll bring him back just as good as I found him. Now come on, Sam. We've got something to do before we can concentrate on the fighting."

"What's that? Rob an armory? Experiment on an alien that you already killed? Are you going to give me some of that super soldier serum that you took?"

Steve shook his head. "We're going to evacuate a nursing home."

Sam was terrible at hiding his disappointment.

* * *

Once Peggy and the rest of the nursing home were in a safe proximity, Steve and Sam ran through the city until they found themselves at the heart of the fight. Natasha was currently slaughtering aliens by the dozen with just a paring knife. Clint had since run out of arrows and was just smacking everything that moved with his bow. Tony was zooming around the fight with at least eight aliens on his tail. Thor was on top of the empire state building summoning a dangerous amount of lightning.

Things were going well.

"So this is what you do when you're not in the dorms." Sam said by way of lightening the situation.

Steve cracked a smile. "Only on Tuesdays."

"There you are!" Tony grounded himself for just the slightest of seconds. "Who's he?"

"Sam Wilson." Sam extended his hand for a handshake despite the fact that he had met Tony before.

"An extra set of hands." Steve interjected, knowing that now was not really the time for niceties. "He can help. How are we doing?"

"Don't really have time to give you a play-by-play, Cap." Tony replied in an exasperated tone. He dropped a small black device in his hand. "That's a comm device. Stick it in your ear and we'll be able to communicate throughout this shit show. Sorry Sam the hands, I would have brought you one, but I didn't know you existed. Anyway. I think that Nat might need your help over on High Street."

Steve quickly shoved the comm in his ear and ran off to High Street, letting Sam figure out his own strategy. They both knew how fighting worked. Neither one had to babysit the other.

"Ah, fuck!" Tony howled over the comm. "Where's Banner? We need him."

"Banner?" Steve asked incredulously, ducking behind his shield as the aliens began firing at him. "Why do we need Banner? He's probably safer in the lab than he is out here."

"Didn't you read the orientation guide that I sent to you?" Tony demanded in exasperation. Natasha flew overhead, riding one of the alien's strange hovercraft machines. Steve paused to watch her for a moment before another group of aliens launched themselves at him.

"You sent it to me three days ago and it was four-hundred pages. It's finals week, Stark. I didn't have time to read it, yet. I'm still trying to memorize all of the artistic eras." Steve complained, bashing in an alien's skull with the blunt edge of his shield.

"Then Rogers, do we have a surprise for you." Natasha's voice drawled from over the comm. Even in the middle of an apocalyptic fight, she sounded like she was in on some joke that nobody else could figure out. Steve rolled his eyes and continued fighting.

* * *

It took about two hours for the fight to become manageable. Just as Steve was beginning to think that they had won, he saw the cause of the problem: Loki. He was guiding the aliens towards the wormhole. They were exiting the world.

"Did we win?" Tony asked hopefully.

"I think not," Thor responded grimly. "Loki's gestures suggest that they mean to gather in another realm. They will likely return with greater forces and a more formidable purpose."

"I'm sorry, did Thor just say more forbidable?" Clint complained.

"Applesauce," Steve grumbled under his breath.

"Notebook." Tony sighed.

* * *

 **Ummm, okay, so apparently there's a lot of questions and comments about ships and pairings in this fic. I'm so into it. I love that you guys are invested enough to root for one ship or another. That being said, there will be no sailing on this day.**

 **Here's the thing: if you check out my repertoire, you'll see that I've _only_ written fics that involve ships and romance. I've never remained romantically ambiguous. I've never explored other ways to employ characters. I think it's time that I try my hand at it. That's not to say that you can't interpret the story as you will: it's certainly feasible that Steve and Tony are in a relationship and keeping it quiet. Steve and Natasha might be going to breakfast after their gym dates. Steve and Sam might be too shy to confess their feelings to each other. Steve might still be trying to sort out his feelings for Peggy. There won't be anything in the fic that shuts that down. It just won't be explicitly stated, you know? I'm just trying to rewrite Captain America's return to the world in a way that I like better.**

 **That said, if you truly cannot imagine a Captain America fanfiction that does not involve romance, I completely understand. I completely sympathize. Steve is the perfect character to throw in the middle of a romance. So if you can just hold tight and wait for me to finish this fic, I'll be rolling out a few Jane Austen AUs in which Steve falls in love with Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, and Peggy Carter in a few months' time.**

 **Anyway, enjoy what you have while you have it. And get ready for a crazy few days of fighting!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight: Welcome to the Avengers. Now Let's Go Save the World.**

 **(Fighting, Day 2)**

"You're supposed to be helping me study," Steve complained as Tony played around on one of his high-tech monitors in his lab. Bruce was by his side, apparently overseeing whatever it was he was doing. Tony looked up in surprise. He had probably forgotten that Steve was even in the room.

"Why don't you get Sam the hands to help you?" Tony asked, returning his attention to the monitor.

Steve had originally asked Sam to help him study, but Sam had fallen asleep almost immediately after cracking open Steve's literature textbook. He was exhausted from all of the fighting. Steve smiled in Sam's general direction before shaking his head.

"I was hoping for a study partner that would stay awake for longer than ten minutes."

"Why not ask Peggy? She's awake." Tony muttered, still absorbed in whatever he was doing on the monitor.

"She is?" Steve perked up a bit.

While he had found a relatively safe area for all of the other occupants of the retirement home, he brought Peggy back to the tower. He wanted to know where she was at all times of the fight. He couldn't lose her again.

"Uh-huh. Go bore her. Maybe it'll make her feel better about spending the last sixty years without you." Tony replied, scrolling through a long page of text on the monitor.

"Tony!" Bruce admonished.

"It's fine," Steve rolled his eyes and slung his backpack over his shoulder. "I'll get out of your hair. Before I do -"

Steve took a step closer to the monitor and tilted his head to the side. A familiar photograph caught his eye.

"What is it that you're looking up?"

Tony finally looked away from the monitor for longer than a minute. He looked reluctant to share exactly what it was that he was doing. Steve folded his arms across his chest and waited for an answer.

"Just...checking up on some old SHIELD files."

"How old?"

Tony shrugged. "Depends on the file."

"Does Fury know that you're doing this?"

Fury was something like a boss to the Avengers, apparently. Steve had met him after being thawed out and cruelly thrust into the real world, but he hadn't spent a whole lot of time trying to talk to him. Natasha seemed to trust him. That was good enough for Steve.

"Not exactly," Tony shifted his weight from foot to foot with a sheepish grin. "I'm practicing my skills as a spy."

"So you're hacking." Steve had just learned the word a few days prior. He was proud of himself for remembering. He was less proud of Tony for doing something that was apparently very much against the law.

"I just want to make sure that we know everything that we need to know to protect ourselves." Tony asserted, holding his hands up in resignation.

"You swear?" Steve persisted uncertainly. "You're not moving money around, or making any commands?"

"Moving money? Steve, I've got enough money. I've got more money than I know what to do with. I have more money than all of the intelligence agencies put together. I'm just checking out what Fury hasn't been telling us."

"Okay," Steve looked over at Bruce for reassurance. Bruce nodded and shrugged. That was good enough for Steve. He did trust Tony, after all. He was Howard's kid, and Howard had always been a good guy.

* * *

"I'm so sorry that you got dragged into SHIELD like this," Peggy sighed as she quizzed Steve on the contents of his many notecards. "Although I must admit that it is rather comforting to see you in uniform again."

Steve laughed and looked down at the costume that he thought he had put in the past. "Yeah, it kind of feels nice to wear it again. It's comfortable. It's familiar. I don't know. Maybe going to school was a stupid idea. Maybe we'd all be better off if I just joined SHIELD full-time."

Peggy swatted at Steve's arm. It didn't hurt, but it caught his attention. "Don't you even think about it! You have spent all your life working to please others. You deserve this, Steve."

"Yeah, well," Steve cast her a good-natured smile. "I don't even know if I'll be allowed to stay at this point. I might fail all of my finals and get kicked out."

"I can't believe that your professors won't change your exam date. There may not even be a world come Tuesday morning!" Peggy shook her head in disbelief.

"I'm telling you, Peg, these kids have got it pretty tough. If you thought grade school was bad, you wouldn't believe what they're going through. The professors don't care. Half of my professors don't even know my name, but they give me hundreds of pages of reading and expect me to remember every detail perfectly. And tuition costs...I thought that I had seen it all until I saw how much tuition costs." Steve ran a hand through his hair.

"The world is a different place," Peggy conceded. "But it isn't all bad."

"No, it's not." Steve agreed with a small smile. "A lot of things about it are really good; the vaccines are good, the food's much better, ATM's are so helpful, and Netflix...I don't know how we lived without it. But sometimes I wish that I could pull some things out of the past and bring them here with me, y'know?"

"Oh, yes. I know." Peggy smiled at Steve warmly.

"So, hey," Tony poked his head into the doorway with an awkward stare. "Bruce and I are taking a quick survey around the tower and we thought we'd ask you."

"Is it about pizza again? Because I'm not getting in the middle of the thin crust versus thick crust fight." Steve chuckled, sitting back in his seat and watching Tony appraisingly.

"No, it's, uh, it's not about pizza." Tony replied uncomfortably. He took a few hesitant steps into the room and smiled. It was the same smile that Howard wore when he knew that he was in trouble. It was a smile that he hoped would overcompensate for bad news. Steve braced himself for the worst. The aliens had probably come back.

"Okay, shoot."

Tony nodded. "Alright, well...theoretically speaking, how would you feel if you found out that your best friend that you thought was dead, wasn't really dead and has been experimented on and used as a secret weapon for an intelligence agency that you thought was good, but wasn't really good? Just theoretically."

"Tony," Steve's voice became much rougher than he meant for it to be. Tony's eyes widened and his smile faltered. Steve couldn't be bothered to care. "What are you trying to say?"

At that moment, JARVIS decided to speak up. "Sir, we have found the location of James Buchanan Barnes."

* * *

"We don't know how safe it would be." Natasha said for the tenth time.

"Yeah, but it couldn't hurt. According to his records, he's the perfect soldier. Right now, that's what we need to beat Loki and his motley crew. We can worry about the logistics later." Tony asserted.

"How do you know that he won't shoot at one of us? You saw the files; he works for Hydra, not SHIELD. Pierce could be giving him orders to kill us all." Natasha persisted.

"Why would he do that? Pierce doesn't know that we know about Hydra. Besides, we've got something he doesn't." Tony said.

"What's that?" Clint asked, looking around the room curiously.

Tony walked over to Steve and put a hand on his shoulder. Steve shrugged it off and shook his head.

"What do you think, Steve?" Bruce finally asked.

Steve looked around at everyone in the room. It was the kind of look that made everyone else look at the ground in shame. "I don't think that we should be making any decisions for him. Hydra stripped him of the right to choose what he does or doesn't do. If we continue to do that, we're no better than Hydra. I think that if we're really committed to everything that SHIELD is supposed to stand for, we should get him back and let him decide. He deserves no less."

"Steve, I know that he's your friend, but look at the records," Natasha reasoned. "He's killed a lot of people. Good people. He isn't the same person that you left in the 1940's."

Steve's jaw tightened. "You don't know that."

"I just want you to be prepared for what we might find." Natasha's face softened. She took a step towards Steve. Steve looked at the ground and folded his arms across his chest. "He might not be someone that we can save."

"I've got to at least try." Steve's voice left no room for debate.

It was a few minutes before Tony gathered up the courage to speak. "And what if he isn't someone that we can save?"

"Then he'll be my responsibility." Steve responded matter-of-factly. "And I'll do what I have to."

"You know that might mean -"

"Where is he right now?" Steve interrupted Clint. Clint immediately backed down. "I want to get him away from Hydra before Loki and his army come back."

* * *

 **BUCKY'S BACK! Yes, that's right. I am throwing yet another character into the mix. But I've never understood why Tony didn't find out about the Winter Soldier when he hacked SHIELD's files in the first Avenger's movie. I mean, I know that the simple explanation is that they could get another movie out of it, but...**

 **Come on. Having Bucky jump into the fight is a dream come true. The angst of it all: the reunion, the mistrust, the fighting, the possibility of someone getting hurt, the fact that Steve still has not written his paper...it's too good to give up.**

 **Anyhow. I hope you're all enjoying this rather long fight montage!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine: Welcome to the Avengers. Now Let's Go Save the World.**

 **(Fighting, Day 3)**

Recovering Bucky Barnes was no small task. Tony and Bruce tracked him down in a safe house in Washington D.C.. Natasha and Clint worked on stealing a plane and some gear from SHIELD headquarters while Sam, Steve and Thor worked out a plan of attack based off of the blueprints that Tony and Bruce were able to provide. All the while, Steve couldn't help but think of the 15 page paper that he should have been writing for his history course.

At three thirty-seven in the morning, the Avengers arrived at the SHIELD safe house. Sam, Natasha and Clint quietly took out every guard that might have ruined their chances at a stealthy operation. Tony and Bruce used some piece of technology that could pick up on thermal radiation to track down Bucky. Steve followed after them, poking his head in every room just to make sure that they weren't missing him.

He was still amazed that Bucky was alive. Tony had shown him all of the files and records that he could find, and had carefully explained that Bucky had undergone a treatment similar to Steve's. It had been under Hydra. Bucky had then been hand crafted into a killing machine. Tony mentioned more than once that Hydra had likely erased his memories altogether.

"In here," Tony hissed, nodding towards a door at the end of a long hallway. "That's definitely him."

"Need backup?" Sam asked over the comms.

"No." Steve replied immediately. "Let me go in alone. We don't know what he might do, especially if he feels cornered. Give me ten minutes with him. I'll let you know if I need backup."

Bruce looked uncertain, but Tony just nodded.

"Good luck, you crumb." He placed a hand on Steve's shoulder gently. Steve smiled back at him faintly. Tony only allowed 1940's slang when he knew that Steve needed something calming, something familiar. That meant that Tony was worried. Steve tried not to let that bother him.

He drew in a deep breath before walking down the hallway and opening the door.

The figure sitting on the other side of the room was not James Buchanan Barnes. He had the same dark features and the same posture, but that was it. His eyes did not dance the way that they had at the World Fair. They were dull, lifeless, and haunted. His hair was not meticulously groomed the way that it had been even during the war. It was scruffy and scraggly and an afterthought at best. He had a metal arm. He did not look happy. He looked miserable. He was not full of life, he was just alive. Steve cringed before taking a step towards him.

"Bucky?"

Bucky looked up at him inquisitively. His hands reached down towards his pockets. Likely a concealed weapon. Steve ignored his instinct to grab his shield. Instead, he held up his hands as a sign of peace.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Bucky growled, his eyes narrowing.

So Tony had been right. Those bastards had erased Bucky's memory. Steve gritted his teeth by way of getting rid of his anger before forcing a calm smile. He needed to soothe Bucky. He needed to convince Bucky that he wasn't a threat.

"You are, pal," Steve could feel his smile slipping. He redoubled his efforts. "Remember me? I'm Steve. Your best bud. We used to live near each other in Brooklyn. You would pull me out of fights every day, you brought me food when you knew I didn't have enough money for groceries, we snuck out of the house every Saturday night to practice driving your dad's car…"

Bucky stared at him, uncomprehending.

"I don't…" He took a small step towards Steve. Steve smiled encouragingly.

Unfortunately, Bucky's progress was tossed aside the moment that Natasha and Sam came crashing through the door. They each pointed handguns in Bucky's direction, completely ignoring Steve's protests and arguments.

"Hands up," Sam demanded as Natasha edged closer to Bucky. "I need to see some hands."

"Knock it off!" Steve commanded, reaching for Sam's arm. He would disarm both Sam and Natasha by force if need-be. Bucky was scared and confused. Jumping out at him would just make him scared, confused, and defensive.

Sure enough, while Steve attempted to shame Natasha and Sam into lowering their weapons, Bucky sprang into action. He pulled a knife from his pocket, cut Natasha's arm, and launched himself at Sam. Steve tried to put himself in the way, but Sam shoved him aside and moved towards Bucky.

Hearing the mayhem going on on the other side of the door, Tony, Clint and Thor ran in. No questions were asked. They just set to work subduing Bucky to the best of their abilities. At this point, Steve knew that there was nothing he could do. Bucky was agitated and armed. It would be much safer for everyone involved to allow the rest of the Avengers to disarm Bucky and put him in an isolated environment.

"I'm so sorry, Buck." He mumbled as Bucky looked up at him for help.

* * *

Bucky was put in a holding cell that was meant for Bruce Banner. Bruce apparently turned into some kind of monster when he got angry. Natasha showed Steve videos on the flight back to New York. Steve stayed by the holding cell. While Bucky slept and sulked, Steve studied for his finals, ate his meals, and refused consolation and apologies from his teammates. Bucky said nothing.

Around noon, Steve's eyelids started to droop. He had been trying to review his notecards while looking for sources for his paper but was running out of energy. He had spent the entire night recovering Bucky, and had to be awake during the day in case Loki decided to return.

It was because he was so exhausted that he did not know whether or not he had actually heard Bucky say, in a very small voice, "I know you."

Real or not, Steve perked up. He watched Bucky curiously, desperate to hear him say something else.

"I know you." Bucky said just a little bit louder.

"Yeah?" Steve's voice was hoarse with disuse.

"You're Steve," Bucky mumbled, looking down at the ground with furrowed eyebrows. He appeared to be working through things. "Your mom's name was Sarah. You wore newspapers in your shoes."

A smile of relief broke across Steve's face. There was still something there. A piece of the old Bucky was still hiding within the monster that Hydra had created.

"You...died," Bucky looked more confused than ever. "They all told me that you did."

"Yeah, well," Steve chuckled. "You're supposed to be dead, too. I guess we're both bad at following orders."

* * *

Steve talked to Bucky for a few hours. He learned that he had to tread lightly around certain topics, like the evils of Hydra, what they had both missed throughout the years, and anything about Bucky's past. Trivial topics worked much better. Bucky would pretend to listen while looking Steve over with a curious expression.

After a while, Steve's phone chirped for the sixth time, indicating that he had a text message. It was from Tony, reminding him that he had to eat at some point. Steve's mouth quirked into a small smile before he turned to look at Bucky.

"Hey Buck, are you hungry?"

"Hungry?" Bucky looked mildly confused by the question. "I don't know, I...I guess so."

"Alright," Steve had learned that even the smallest of smiles seemed to reassure Bucky. "I'll go grab us something to eat. Be right back."

He cast Bucky one last smile before struggling to his feet and trudging in the direction of the kitchen. There, he made ten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They had always been Bucky's favorite.

As he put away the peanut butter and the jelly and went to grab sodas, Tony materialized in the doorway. Steve suspected that he had put JARVIS on Steve-watch, alerting him whenever Steve left Bucky's side.

"They didn't mean to -"

"I know." Steve cut him off. He was just going to try to convince Steve that Sam and Natasha meant well by barging into the room and scaring Bucky. Steve already knew that they meant well. That did not change the fact that it had happened.

"You should -"

"Later."

Tony looked him over for a moment before nodding slowly. "Alright. Take your time. Just remember that Loki could come back at any time, and we're going to need your help when he does."

"Uh-huh." Steve murmured as he walked back in the general direction of Bucky's holding cell. He knew that Tony was just trying to keep the team functional. They wouldn't fight well if Steve held grudges against Natasha and Sam. He just wasn't ready to relinquish his anger yet.

"Is he okay?" He heard Natasha whisper to Tony as he walked away.

"I think so," Tony murmured back. "He just needs time. You know Steve. He deals with things on his own."

Steve shook his head and turned the corner. He faked a smile as Bucky came into view.

"Hey, Buck. Brought us sandwiches." Steve held up the plate full of sandwiches for no particular reason at all.

Bucky did not seem overly interested in the sandwiches. He was sitting on the floor of his cell, looking Steve over inquisitively. He looked like a caged animal. Steve squirmed uncomfortably.

"You want to take a break from that thing? I don't think that you're going to hurt anyone." Steve knew that he was talking more to himself than he was to Bucky. He moved as he spoke. The door to the holding cell was unlocked in seconds. Steve held it open and smiled at Bucky encouragingly.

Bucky took a few hesitant steps, staring at Steve all the while. Steve smiled, closing the door behind Bucky. The two sat down on the ground and began to eat their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in silence.

It was ten minutes before either of them said anything. Bucky spoke first.

"You used to be allergic to these."

Steve grinned, relieved that Bucky still remembered details about their past. "Yeah, well. Whatever it was that Howard Stark shot into me got rid of all of those allergies. Now I can eat as much peanut butter as I want."

"You were allergic to a lot of things," Bucky furrowed his eyebrows, struggling to immerse himself in a past that Hydra had tried to take from him. "And your lungs hurt whenever it got cold outside. And you always pretended that it didn't bother you when I smoked, but I knew that it did."

"I was never much of a liar." Steve accepted sheepishly.

"No, you weren't." Bucky agreed with a faint smile. "Your nose always twitched when you were lying."

"Really?" Steve didn't know that. "You never told me."

"No, I guess I didn't. But you didn't tell me that you went back to school."

"You figured that out, huh?"

Bucky shrugged. "Everyone was talking about it. And you were reading a textbook earlier. You're studying art. That's good. You always liked art."

Steve couldn't help but smile. "I made you pose for me when I wanted to sketch."

Bucky nodded with a small smile of his own. "You're not going to make me do that now, are you?"

"No," Steve laughed. "Although I might have you quiz me on flashcards."

The sound of a siren forced Bucky and Steve out of the comfortable world that they had been settling into. They both looked up like spooked deer.

"The aliens are back," Tony's voice sounded over the tower intercom. "They're back and they're not fucking around. Everyone meet in the lobby in ten. Be suited up and ready to go. That includes you, Banner."

* * *

The Avengers assembled in the tower lobby a few short minutes later. Natasha was calibrating her tasers, Clint was counting his arrows, Bruce was shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously, Thor was twirling his hammer and pretending to be confident, Sam was pretending to be occupied with the flight suit that Tony had built him during a bout of insomnia, and Tony was having JARVIS check everyone's vitals before they entered the fight.

Everyone stopped what they were doing when Steve walked into the lobby with Bucky at his heels. They all stared at Bucky like he had grown seven heads. Bucky shrank back a bit. Steve, on the other hand, set his jaw and stepped in front of Bucky.

"Steve, I don't think -"

"Nat," Steve cut her off sternly. "It's fine."

"Okay." Natasha immediately accepted Steve's decision. Nobody seemed to like Bucky's presence very much, but they knew better than to argue. Bucky remained silent. He didn't trust the Avengers any more than they trusted him.

"Alright. The citizens are out of the way, the police have set up a perimeter, and Thor's girlfriend is working on figuring out how to close the portal. All we have to do is concentrate the fight and kick Loki's sorry ass. Thor, where do we stand on the dead-or-alive command?" Tony asked, glancing over at Thor. Explosions roared in the background.

"We take him alive." Thor declared.

"Really?" Clint whined.

"Fine." Tony declared. "Loki's a prisoner. Everybody else can go. Are you guys ready?"

"No." Clint and Sam said in unison. Everybody else rolled their eyes while Clint and Sam grinned at each other.

"Let's do this." Tony sighed, pressing the door to open the door.

The Avengers all exchanged nervous looks before stepping outside.

* * *

It was an hour into the fight and Steve's face was caked in blood. He continued tearing apart every alien that he could catch without a second thought. The only prisoner was Loki. Everybody else was a hostile.

"Have you studied for your final at all?" Natasha asked as she launched herself on an alien's shoulders just to tase him in the neck. "It's soon, isn't it?"

"I can't really worry about that, Nat." Steve huffed.

"Then when are you going to worry about it?" Tony chimed in over the comms.

"C'mon," There was a paradoxically playful element to Natasha's voice. "It'll be fun. We'll quiz you while we fight. When was Monet born?"

"I don't know." Steve grumbled, ducking behind his shield to avoid getting shot.

"JARVIS, what is the correct answer?" Tony asked.

"It's 1840." Sam - who had finally received a comm - interjected. "We just went over that question last night, Steve."

"Look, I've got more important things on my mind!" Steve reminded them in exasperation. He leapt onto one of the flying vehicles that the aliens were driving around and ripped out the strange wiring attached to their skulls.

"More important things?" Tony demanded incredulously. "Steven Grant Rogers, do you know how much I'm paying for your tuition? You better take school seriously."

"I think that protecting the world takes priority, Tony." Steve grumbled, looking around for any sign of Bucky. He had been fairly quiet throughout the fight. "Does anyone have visuals on Bucky?"

"Nope." Clint chimed in from the rooftop of some building.

"Not in this quadrant." Tony added.

"Not here, either." Sam remarked.

Bruce - or, rather, the Hulk - made an unintelligible sound that Steve assumed meant that there was no sign of Bucky in his area, either.

"On your left, Steve. Under the semi." Natasha called into her comm. Steve turned around reflexively. Bucky was crouched underneath a semi-truck, looking around with wide eyes. The look on his face was the very same one that he had worn in the Hydra safehouse. He looked like a trapped animal.

Steve should have known better than to look away from the fight for even a minute. He should have known better than to get engaged in the fight to begin with. He should have known better than to leave his cramped dorm room. He should have known better than to do anything other than study on the weekend before finals.

The point was: Steve was distracted and consequently got pinned down by an alien holding a laser gun thing that Steve did not completely understand to his skull. He squirmed and kicked and flailed to no avail. If someone didn't intervene, he would die.

"Guys," He managed to choke out, sticking his hand out to hold the gun just far enough from his head to buy him a few precious seconds. "I need someone. Now."

"Are you okay?" Tony demanded from over the comm. "Someone make sure he's okay."

"I can see him, but I'm outnumbered." There was an element of panic in Natasha's voice. "Someone needs to get down here ASAP."

So this was what dying felt like.

Steve closed his eyes, sucked in a breath, and hoped that he wouldn't feel a thing.

To his surprise, he really didn't feel a thing. It wasn't because the alien aimed his gun at a merciful spot, or even because his body took pity on him and shut down before the shot arrived. It was because Bucky Barnes ran out from his hiding spot and launched himself at the alien, effectively knocking him right off of Steve.

Steve staggered to his feet as Bucky ripped the alien apart, limb from limb.

Once he was finished, he turned around to look at Steve. He looked startled, like he was just now realizing the situation at hand.

"Are…" He continued to look Steve over confusedly. "Are you okay?"

"F-fine." Steve's voice was a little shaky, but he was otherwise fine.

Bucky nodded. "Good."

"Is Steve safe? Guys? Someone. Update me. Is Steve safe?" Tony demanded over the comms.

"He's good. Barnes got him." Natasha answered before Steve could. He glanced over at where she was taking on twelve aliens at one time. He cast Bucky a smile that he hadn't used since World War II.

"What do you say we help her out?" He suggested to Bucky.

"Alright," Bucky nodded at length. "Can't be worse than the time that Dum Dum woke up an entire German monastery on a covert mission."

* * *

Three hours, twenty-two minutes, and six seconds. That's how long it took for Thor to capture Loki. Though the aliens were still swarming around New York City, they were much less organized without their leader. United, they were a force to be reckoned with. Divided, they were going down like they were made of paper.

Everything was looking up until Nick Fury's voice came over the comms.

"Stark, we've got a bogey. Do you copy?"

"A _what_?" Steve and Bucky exchanged startled looks.

"Shit. A missile. We've got a missile coming in. How long do we have, Nick?" Tony demanded, overrun by at least twenty aliens attempting to jump onto his suit.

"Twenty seconds."

"Double shit. JARVIS, I need you to put everything I've got into the thrusters."

"I've got you, pal." Steve chimed in, dashing over to where Tony was struggling. He wrangled the aliens off of Tony. Now freed, Tony flew off to save New York. Steve couldn't help but admire him for his immediate bravery. He hadn't even taken a second to consider his options; he had just sprung into action. He must have gotten that from his mother.

"Thor, how's Jane coming with closing that portal?" Clint asked over the comms. "Does Nat have to go up there and help her?"

"Jane can fare on her own," Thor snapped back. He was very defensive of Jane Foster's intellectual prowess, it seemed.

"Tell her to hold off on closing the portal, Thor," Tony said. His voice was louder than usual. Howard's voice always got louder when he was nervous. It seemed that Tony had picked up that habit. "I've got to put this missile somewhere, and I know just the place to put it."

"Tony," Steve protested, his voice hollow. He had already lost so many people. He couldn't lose Tony, too. "You know that's a one-way trip."

"Sure do," Tony was trying to sound cheerful. He was failing miserably. "You can't always be the one making sacrificial plays, Rogers. You've got other things to do. You've got finals to take. Just don't forget to -" Tony's voice cut off as he entered (or exited, depending on how you looked at it) the portal into an unknown expanse of the universe.

Steve stared up at the portal. It felt like his heart had been thrown into one of those new high-tech garbage compactors. He had lost a lot of people throughout his life, but he could never grow acclimated with the feeling of loss. He wanted Tony to emerge from the portal, grinning and showboating in that infuriating way of his.

"We cannot keep the portal open forever," Thor eventually said.

Natasha stepped away from the fight and took a place by Steve. She laced her hand through his and gave it a gentle squeeze. Bucky afforded him a small, reassuring smile. Sam ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. He was at a loss for words.

"Close it." Clint was the only one who had the courage to accept the reality of the situation.

The Hulk roared in protest. Steve silently agreed with him.

There was a sudden flash and then the portal began to close.

Tony was gone.

Steve hung his head and blinked back tears stinging at his eyes. He would survive this. He had survived Bucky's death. He had survived both of his parents' deaths. He had survived his own death. He would also survive Tony's death. Somehow.

But then Tony Stark did the impossible.

Like Steve and Bucky, he defied death.

Just as the portal was about to close for good, Tony fell right through the narrowing gap. Steve would have missed the entire thing if Natasha hadn't squeezed his hand and pointed up at the sky.

"That son of a bitch," Steve's voice was quivering with giddiness.

Tony was alive. Steve would not have to survive yet another death.

"He's not slowing down." Sam noticed it first. Tony was falling towards the pavement, his arms and legs hanging limp. He looked like a rag doll being thrown from a second story window.

"I have him." Thor assured everyone.

It was Hulk that caught Tony, though. He jumped up and gathered Tony up in his arms, carrying him like a new bride over a threshold. The rest of the Avengers dashed over to them as Hulk laid Tony down on the ground. Steve ripped his damned mask from his face, hoping that Tony was still breathing. He couldn't go through the process of losing Tony for the second time in less than ten minutes. He just couldn't.

"Is he...is he…" Steve looked around helplessly.

Sam was the only one able to act rationally. He knelt down by Tony's side and felt for a pulse. His facial expression did not convey anything too positive. Steve turned to look off in the distance. He did not want to be a part of this experience. Bucky noticed and shuffled closer to Steve. He leaned up against Steve in an effort to console him. Steve smiled at him gratefully.

Hulk - ever dramatic Hulk - decided to take matters into his own hands. He stomped closer to Tony and let out a bone-rattling howl. The Avengers jumped back. The arc reactor in the middle of Tony's chest lit up. Tony's eyes snapped open.

"Woahhh-" Tony's eyes looked around frantically. "What the hell? What happened? Nobody kissed me, did they? I feel like somebody kissed me. Steve, did you let Sam the hands kiss me?"

Steve laughed and shook his head. He felt twenty times lighter than he had five minutes before. "No, Tony. Nobody kissed you."

"Then what's going on?" Tony tried to sit up, but Sam stopped him. He said something about protocol and getting paramedics to look Tony over. Steve didn't know too much about any of that, but he trusted that Sam did.

"We won." Steve said, grinning from ear to ear.

"Good. Good work, guys. So, uh," Tony sighed, leaning his head back onto the pavement. "When was Picasso's Blue Period?"

"What?"

"You heard me, Rogers." Tony might have almost died, but he refused to grant Steve a study break. "Your final is in twelve hours and you haven't even started your paper. I doubt you've spent more than an hour studying, either. We've got to get moving."

* * *

 **Angst and school and a couple of almost-deaths. What's not to like?**

 **I know this took forever and a day to update, but such is life these days. This was a long chapter, and like Steve, I've got some studying to do. So hang in tight, read what you can _when_ you can, and maybe leave a few reviews to inspire me to write a little faster. It might work. It might not. Let's find out!**

 **In the meantime, enjoy chapter nine!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten: Finals**

"Fifteen minutes! Where are we with the paper?" Tony called, pacing the length of the living room with some difficulty. Sam had given up on forcing Tony to follow the doctor's strict "bed rest" orders and had instead placed a cast around his neck, his left leg, and his ribcage. Instead of strutting about while issuing commands, Tony was forced to hobble about while issuing commands.

"Almost done, just waiting for Loki to finish up the work's cited." Clint replied.

"I really don't see how this is fair." Loki complained from the corner of the room, where he was being strictly monitored by Thor.

"Well, you did just try to enslave the human race." Sam bit back with a glare.

"I am a king." Loki responded matter-of-factly.

"Not here," Thor countered. "Now, don't forget the hanging indent at the beginning of the citation."

"Steve, how are you feeling about art history?"

"We've gone through his flashcards three times. He's got it." Natasha responded.

"What about literature? Have all of the short stories been read?"

"Played the audio books when he was down for his nap." Bruce chimed in.

With the way that everyone was talking about him in the third person, Steve felt like a child under the care of the most incompetent parents in the world. Somehow, though, he didn't mind. It was nice. It was reassuring to know that these people were looking out for him.

"Good. Steve, Natasha is going to drive you to your final; Happy is too anxious to leave the tower. He thinks that someone is going to sneak in here and murder me while I'm crippled. I don't know. I don't have time to explain him to you. So gather up your stuff and get down to the garage. Your exam starts in twelve minutes." Tony said in an oddly authoritative voice.

"You got it." Steve began gathering up his stuff. Bucky looked at him anxiously all the while.

Bucky hadn't been alone with the rest of the Avengers since they had attacked him in the Hydra safe house. He probably didn't trust them very much. He had just begun to trust Steve half as much as he had trusted him back in the day. Sympathy tugged at Steve's heart.

"Can Bucky come with me?"

"To your final?" Tony's voice was full of disapproval. "What would he do? Sit around and piss off the professor?"

"I don't know, he could wait in the library. What do you think, Buck?" Steve and Tony both turned to look at Bucky. Bucky shrank back from their stares.

"The library sounds...okay."

"Alright." Steve smiled brightly. "Nat, are you ready to go?"

"Ready whenever you are."

"Sam, you want to come along?"

"Why would I do that?" Sam's eyes darted from Steve to Bucky inquisitively. It was obvious that he was worried about being put in charge of Bucky. Steve rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I think Russell's probably worried about you."

Sam's eyes widened. "Oh, shit."

"Did you forget about your family?" Clint asked, a shit-eating grin crossing his face. He had been looking for reasons to pick on Sam since Steve had invited him to join the group.

"I've been busy." Sam grumbled, collecting his own belongings and following Steve in the direction of the garage. Clint followed at his heels, still grinning.

"Too busy to remember that you have a family? I don't know, Sam the hands. That sounds like some serial killer shit to me. Are you sure we should have him in the tower, Tony? He might kill us all in our sleep. I don't think he has much of a sense of loyalty." Clint called over his shoulder.

"What do you mean 'have him in the tower'? He isn't living here. He's not living here, right, Steve? Steve?" Tony shouted after them.

"When are you planning on telling him that you're moving in?" Steve asked Sam quietly.

"After you tell him that Bucky is moving in." Sam said decidedly.

* * *

While Sam went to the dorms to tell Russell that he was alive and Bucky went to the library to hide from the Avengers, Steve and Natasha hurried towards the room where Steve's final would be held. Steve only had a minute to make it to the classroom before the professor locked the classroom door and Natasha was prepared to kick down the door if she had to.

Luckily, it did not come to that.

Steve stumbled into the classroom with thirteen seconds to spare. Everyone looked up from their notes and stared at him like he was a madman. That was probably because he hadn't had time to shower or clean up since his fight with the aliens. He was covered in blood and dirt. His fingernails were practically black. He could feel bruises forming on his neck from his brief skirmish with the alien that had nearly killed him. He smiled self-consciously and scurried over to his assigned seat.

"Okay," The professor couldn't tear his eyes off of Steve even as he handed out the tests. "Your exam begins once you receive it. You have two and a half hours. Good luck."

* * *

Steve was the last one to finish his exam. When he finally handed in his exam - which was smudged with the dirt and blood that rubbed off of his hands throughout the two and a half hours it took him to remember the entire history of art - he walked out of the classroom to see everyone standing there.

Natasha, Tony, and Sam were the first people that Steve saw. Sam was ignoring Clint, who was trying to tease him for forgetting that his family existed. Tony was pacing the length of the hallway anxiously. Natasha was hacking the art department's computers to access the final exam that Steve had just taken. She wanted to see if he had studied the answers to the questions being asked.

Thor and Bruce were lingering in the background. Bruce was peering over Natasha's shoulder while she hacked. Thor was biting his thumb nail and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Bucky was hidden from view. He was sitting down on the ground with his back up against the hallway wall. He watched as Steve left the classroom, but didn't stand up. It seemed that he was not altogether comfortable with the Avengers yet. Steve couldn't really blame him for that.

Tony stopped his pacing. "How'd you do?"

"I don't know, Tony," Steve ran a hand through his matted hair and looked around at the people that had quickly become his friends. A strange feeling gripped his chest. He had never had this many friends before. It had always been just him and Bucky. "I just walked out. I don't think it'll be graded for another few days."

"We studied almost everything on the test." Natasha remarked, staring down at her phone.

Steve rolled his eyes. "Don't hack the school, Nat. I can wait a few days to find out how I did."

"Just trying to help." Natasha responded with a quick smile.

"Was Russell happy to see you?" Steve asked Sam. He couldn't pretend that he wasn't surprised to see him standing among the rest of the Avengers; he had expected him to stay with his family the moment that they were reunited.

Sam snorted. "No. Can you believe it? The kid blamed me for not wrecking the building where his first final was going to be held."

"Sounds about right." Steve laughed. He placed a hand on Sam's shoulder for a moment before walking past his small crowd of friends in Bucky's direction.

Steve sat down on the ground next to Bucky. Everybody else had the decency to pretend that they were occupied with something else during this time. Bucky met Steve's stare hesitantly. Steve grinned and shifted a bit closer.

"What do you think, Buck?"

"About what?" Bucky asked nervously.

"About us." Steve replied. "About staying with us. You know I'd never make you do anything, Buck, but I figure I might as well ask. We're all staying in the Tower right now and there's a room for you if you want it. If you don't, though, Tony could probably find you an apartment of your own. And, uh, he could find you a safe house if you wanted to get away from all of this. From us. I'll support you no matter what you choose."

Bucky looked away from Steve. He looked down at the ground like he was searching for something. "You want me to live with you?"

"'Course I do, pal. But only if that's what you want."

"And they…" Bucky looked over at the rest of the Avengers anxiously. "They know? They're...they're not afraid of me?"

"No, Buck. They're not afraid of you."

Bucky didn't look up from the ground. "I think…"

* * *

 **It's coming to an enddddddd. Yesssss. This is obviously not the last chapter and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to end this yet, but I thought that Steve was overdue for a sweet moment after his awful finals week. Hopefully he passes. He probably will. It sounds like the Avengers prepared him pretty well.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

"No!" Tony hollered. "No pets. There are no pets in the Tower."

"Aw, come on." Clint stooped down next to Lucky and pretended to pout. "We'll behave. I swear we will."

"Don't listen to a word he says." Sam called as he brought a few of his boxes upstairs. "He's full of shit. Maybe he should find a place of his own."

"Watch it, Sam the hands." Tony snapped, glancing up in Sam's general direction. "If I had my way, you wouldn't be here, either."

"After all that I did for you? I brought you back from the dead, Stark!"

"Actually, that was me." Bruce proclaimed from the kitchen.

"Have the groceries been thus purchased? I'm hungry enough to eat a bilgesnipe." Thor complained, racing down the stairs in the direction of the kitchen.

"Don't you have a brother to worry about?" Tony demanded in an exasperated tone. "Shouldn't you be in Asgard dealing with him instead of here, raiding my kitchen?"

"Loki is under the care of my father, now." Thor answered from over his shoulder. "You will be graced with my presence until Odin demands my presence once more. I think that I would like the large bedroom adjacent to Sam's."

"That's _my_ bedroom." Tony said.

"Then I suppose that I should not have moved my things into it." Thor smirked.

" _Damn it, Thor_! Tonight we're ordering thick-crust!" Tony shouted, stomping up the stairs in the direction of his - or possibly _Thor_ 's - bedroom.

While all of the commotion was unfolding throughout the Tower, Steve was unpacking his bags in his new bedroom. Natasha poked her head in the doorway in the midst of Tony and Thor's argument.

"I think we might have to save New York from those two pretty soon."

Steve chuckled and shook his head. "I hope not. I'd hate to take sides."

"I think I'll side with Tony." Natasha supposed, leaning against the doorway.

"You decided that pretty fast," Steve remarked, quirking an eyebrow with a smile. "Got something against Thor?"

"Not really. I just don't want to get kicked out of the Tower. The Wi-Fi is so fast here."

"You young'uns. Always worried about your internet connection." Steve teased.

"Uh-huh. I seem to remember you complaining about your Netflix buffering too much just last week."

"That was different."

"Oh?"

"I had to find out how House of Cards ended."

"Uh-huh." Natasha smirked, standing up straight and walking into the room. She closed the door behind her, effectively muffling Thor and Tony's argument. Their voices were growing louder as Tony grew angrier. Natasha walked over and sat on Steve's bed, watching him unpack. "How's the unpacking going?"

"Good. I think. I don't really have that much stuff." Steve replied with a shrug. "I just hope that Tony lets me stay here next semester. I don't want to move back into the dorms again."

"I would wait a little while before asking Tony for anything else," Natasha suggested as Tony's voice reached an unprecedented decibel. "Bucky, how are you getting along?"

She looked up at where Bucky was sitting atop his own bed.

Before moving into the Tower, Bucky had asked Steve if they could share a room. Steve had agreed without a second thought. It would be just like old times. Besides that, Bucky's presence would be reassuring. It would be a tie to the past.

"It's easy to unpack when you don't own anything." Bucky answered, smiling down at his shoes sheepishly. Every day he became a little bit more like his old self, but he still wasn't fully recovered. Steve didn't know if he ever would be. He seemed to be warming up to Natasha more than the rest of the gang, though.

"We're going to Walmart to get him a few things once I'm done here." Steve chimed in.

"Have you made a list?" Natasha asked Bucky. Bucky glanced at Steve before nodding his head at length.

"Then why don't you let me take you? Steve could take hours and he doesn't even have a car. You don't want to walk down the street with an arm full of shopping bags, trust me. Clint tried it once...he's never really been the same since." She suggested, twirling her car keys around her index finger and grinning at Bucky in that terrifyingly coy way of hers.

Steve smiled at Bucky sympathetically. No one could possibly survive Natasha's charms with their sense of confidence intact.

"I don't…" Bucky turned to look at Steve for reassurance. Steve nodded his head enthusiastically. If anyone else was going to be able to get through to Bucky, it was Natasha.

"Come on." Natasha wasn't really leaving him room to deny her anymore. "I won't bite."

"Might as well go, Buck." Steve chuckled. "She's not going to take no for an answer."

"Okay." Bucky sighed. He was very obviously not eager to go anywhere with Natasha. "Can I...uh...borrow your…?"

Bucky didn't have money. He had been something of a slave to Hydra, and had therefore not required much of a salary at all. He relied entirely on Hydra to supply him with food and clothing. Now that he had left them, he had nothing. Steve fished around his pockets for his wallet.

"Don't worry about it." Natasha waved off Steve's efforts at handing over his wallet. "I've got Stark's credit card. I think we'll be able to make it to Walmart and back before he notices. He seems...preoccupied."

"God damn it Thor, that is _my bed_! You can't just put your fucked up alien pet in _my bed_!" Tony's voice practically shook the Tower.

"Let's get out of here." Natasha said, just barely holding back a smile. "Before Stark really blows a fuse."

* * *

They were late.

They were late, they were late, they were _late._

"Calm down." Sam told Steve for what must have been the hundredth time. "They're probably just running late. Maybe Natasha couldn't find a parking spot. It is New York."

Steve chewed at his thumb nail and continued to pace. Sam was probably right. They probably got caught up in traffic. Bucky's list was long - maybe they were still looking around for everything. Maybe they had to go to multiple stores to buy everything on the list. Maybe Natasha had a few things that she needed to buy, too.

But maybe Sam wasn't right.

Natasha had expressed her distrust of Bucky multiple times, after all. She could have offered to take him shopping as a false pretense. Right now, she could be doing something to him. She could be dropping him off in the middle of nowhere. She could have been bringing him back to Hydra. She could have been…

"Lucy!" Natasha's voice rang through the Tower. Steve let out a huge sigh of relief. "We're home!"

"Where the hell have you been?" He demanded, rushing down the stairs and looking Bucky over critically. There wasn't a scratch on him, nor was there a single hair on his head out of place. Steve had never been so relieved.

"We stopped for Taco Bell. Bucky wanted to try it. Did you miss us?" Natasha teased.

"No, I just -"

"I thought that he was going to start a search party soon." Sam complained from the living room. Steve turned around to glare at him, but couldn't help the sheepish look that crossed his face.

"Alright, I was worried." He admitted.

"Uh-huh. Glad to hear that you trust me, Rogers." Natasha rolled her eyes as she walked past Steve in the direction of the kitchen.

"That's not going to go away any time soon, is it?" Steve cast Bucky a small smile. Bucky smiled back at him apologetically. "So, did you get everything?"

Bucky nodded.

"Did you see the prices?"

Bucky's eyes widened. A smile that looked almost familiar crossed his face. "You noticed them too? I thought that Natasha was playing a prank on me at first. Do you know that it cost over _two hundred dollars_ to get everything? And Natasha! She said that it was cheap! She expected me to spend more than two hundred dollars on everything. How much money does Stark have?"

"From what I've figured out, two hundred dollars isn't that much anymore."

"You can't be serious."

"Dead serious." Steve shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what the hell happened to the economy while we were gone. These kids have just gone and messed everything up."

Bucky smiled at Steve. Steve raised an eyebrow back at him.

"What?"

"You sound like your dad."

"You remember my dad?"

"Yeah." Bucky's smile was fond. "He always got us fireworks on the fourth of July. Even after he lost his job."

Steve smiled and sat down on Tony's $60,000 couch. He ran a hand through his hair. "He was a good man."

"You're just like him, you know." Bucky was looking Steve over like he was seeing him for the first time. "You don't really look like him - you look more like your mom - but you act exactly like him. You're a good man, too. He'd be really proud of you. I don't think that my parents would be very proud of me."

"Of course they would, Buck." Steve cocked his head to the side, trying to understand how Bucky could be so hard on himself. "You're a good man, too."

Bucky snorted. "You don't know that."

"Yes I do. I know that you saved me from being beaten to a pulp at least a hundred times when I was just a little guy. I know that you followed me all throughout Europe trying to save the world."

"I've killed people, Steve. Lots of people. Good people."

"That wasn't you. That was Hydra." Steve was not going to let Bucky go on thinking that he was a bad guy.

"But it was me." Bucky protested.

"You want to know how I know that's not true?" Steve's question was rhetorical.

Still, Bucky folded his arms across his chest and sat down on the other side of the couch. "How?"

"You're here."

"I don't get it."

"Buck, if you were the cold-blooded killer that you think you are, you wouldn't have agreed to any of this. You wouldn't have helped us save New York from the aliens. You wouldn't have agreed to move into Tony's big ugly building. You'd have gotten away during the battle and kept on killing people. You'd have tried to kill me at least eight times by now. You were always a good person, Buck. You were just put into a bad situation."

"I don't know, Steve, I -"

"What the _fuck_?" Tony's voice interrupted the entire conversation. Both Steve and Bucky looked up reflexively. "Who the _fuck_ put _Hello Kitty_ stickers on my suits?"

* * *

 **One more chapter and we're finally done. It's about time, isn't it? School has settled down, everyone is moved into the Tower, Steve and Bucky are getting along...it's nice.**

 **ALSO. Before I set out on the Jane Austen AU quest that I have already promised, I was wondering if anyone out there wants to be my beta reader. I've already started a few variations of a rough draft and struggling through them might be easier with some opinions throughout the process. I'd appreciate literally anyone's help and you can choose what you want to beta (i.e. only Stucky AUs, only Stony AUs, etc.). It could be fun. We could share headcanons and cry over angst together. Plus I'd be happy to beta read right back.**

 **Anyhow, let's try to survive for one more chapter, shall we?**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

"Alys Rodesian."

"How many fucking people are graduating from this fucking school?" Tony complained for the umpteenth time. Everyone surrounding him shushed him in unison. Tony glowered at them all, but folded his arms across his chest and shut his mouth.

It was Steve's graduation day and it was taking forever. Tony Stark was none too amused about it.

"Connor Roff."

"Fuck." Tony mumbled under his breath, slumping down in his chair.

"Relax. He's got to be next." Natasha nudged Tony with her elbow until he sat up straight.

"What is he even doing down there? Did he…" Clint craned his neck to get a better look at the situation. "Did he spill something on his gown? Or did he just shit himself?"

Bucky and Sam immediately exchanged horrified looks.

"The peanut butter."

Unlike Bucky, Sam had never really received any training on keeping his mouth shut. His expertise was pretty much flying around and avoiding bad guys. Because of that lack of training, all of the Avengers - and Nick Fury - were watching Sam expectantly, waiting for an explanation.

"Peanut butter, Sam?" Tony did not sound amused.

"Well," Bucky interjected with an almost apologetic smile. "Steve's always had a large appetite…"

* * *

It was graduation.

It was graduation and Steve had spilled the peanut butter that Sam and Bucky had helped him slip into the ceremony all over his gown. It had been a small accident at first, but he had tried to wipe the peanut butter off and had created a much larger mess in the process. Now it looked like he had pooped himself in the middle of the NYU graduation ceremony. It seemed that Captain America's knack for showmanship had not tapered off during his decades on ice.

"Kevin Roften."

The list was drawing near his name. Steve looked down at his gown helplessly. He then looked around him like he would suddenly find a clean gown lying nearby. He let out a frustrated noise and returned his attention to his gown.

Tony was going to kill him. He had told Steve to avoid messing up his cap and gown until pictures had been taken. Surely Tony would not want pictures of him in a peanut butter-streaked gown. The look did not exactly suggest that this was a proud moment in Steve's life.

" _Pssst_. Steve." Steve turned around quickly. It was Russell.

"What's the matter with you?" Russell asked in a low voice, hunching forward in an effort to be heard from a few seats back.

"Jessica Rogeirrio."

People from Steve's row were disappearing. Steve felt his face redden.

"I got peanut butter all over my gown."

"What? Where the hell did you get peanut butter from?"

"Sam and Bucky."

"Maximilien Roger."

The guy next to Steve stood up. Steve's heart jumped up to his throat.

"That bastard," Russell did not seem to understand the issue. "He wouldn't even let me bring in a Snickers. Is it noticeable?"

Steve looked down. "Yeah, I would say so. I look like I shit myself."

Russell burst out laughing. Everyone around turned to look at him. Russell didn't seem very concerned about it. He just went right on laughing as he wrangled with his own gown.

"Here," He sent the gown flying over the two rows in front of him. Steve caught it just before it landed on the ground. "Just pass it back when you come back to your seat. And don't shit on that one. My mom will kill us both if you do."

"Russell, I could kiss you." Steve felt drunk with relief as he slid off his ruined gown and put on Russell's. It was a little bit smaller, but it was not covered in peanut butter. Surely Tony would prefer a smaller gown to a gown covered in peanut butter.

"Don't make this weird, Rogers."

"Steven Rogers."

A howl came from the section of the stadium that was dominated by the Avengers. Tony was holding a cardboard cutout of Steve's face. Clint was waving a cowbell around. Natasha had an airhorn. Sam, Thor, and Bucky had coordinated their shirts. Sam's said "we," Thor's just had a giant red heart on it, and Bucky's said, "Captain America". Steve pretended to be embarrassed by their over-the-top display. Really, though, he loved belonging to that obnoxious crowd.

He quickly rushed up onto the stage, shook the dean's hand, and accepted the piece of paper that would serve as his diploma until he received his actual diploma in the mail a few weeks later. He shed his gown as he returned to his seat and slipped it to Russell. Multiple professors cast him disapproving looks, but Steve managed to ignore them. After all, they weren't his professors anymore. They couldn't reprimand him for deciding on his own dress code.

Steve allowed a massive smile to take over his face as he leaned back in his fold-up chair.

* * *

"What the hell were you thinking? Eating peanut butter during your own graduation? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, and I've had an eight-hour conversation with Barton before." Tony was quick to berate Steve just as soon as the ceremony ended. Steve cast Sam and Bucky an amused grin and a quick wink before returning his attention to Tony.

"Hey!" Clint jumped in. "I thought that you liked my idea for Adult Preschool."

Tony just rolled his eyes before continuing. "You're lucky that Russell let you borrow his gown."

"Relax, Tony. It's just a little bit of peanut butter." Steve reminded him lightly, slinging his arm over Tony's shoulders as they all made their way towards Tony's gaudy limousine.

"It's the reason you won't have any graduation pictures to show your grandchildren." Tony mumbled petulantly.

"We can have the gown dry-cleaned." Natasha reminded Tony. She cast Steve a reassuring smile. Steve smiled back. "We'll just take the pictures next week."

"See? No harm, no foul." Steve agreed brightly.

"I just don't understand why you had to eat peanut butter, of all things."

"Peanut butter is good."

"So is string cheese, and it doesn't stain your graduation gown."

"String cheese?" Steve cocked his head to the side inquisitively.

"Oh, for god's sake." Tony pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "You've never heard of string cheese?"

Steve looked to Bucky for guidance. Bucky shrugged. He didn't seem to know either.

"They made a new kind of cheese while I was under?" Steve wasn't so much upset that there was a new kind of cheese as he was upset that there was a new kind of cheese that no one had bothered to tell him about. "What's it like?"

"I too have never heard of this stringed cheese." Thor remarked as they piled into the limo.

Tony groaned and slammed his head back against the leather seats.

Natasha, on the other hand, just smirked at Steve before leaning forward and tapping on the glass barrier between the driver's seat - occupied by Happy - and the back seat - occupied by the Avengers.

Happy rolled down the barrier and glanced up at Natasha through the rear-view mirror. "Yes, Miss Romanoff?"

"We've been over this, Happy. It's Natasha."

"Yes, Natasha?"

"Good." In anyone else's voice, Natasha's praise would have sounded patronizing. Since it was Natasha, however, Happy just smiled back at her like he had received a nobel prize. "Now that we've gotten that out of the way, would you mind stopping at the next grocery store you see? There's something that these boys haven't tried yet, and I think that it would make an excellent graduation present."

"We're still talking about cheese, right?"

* * *

 **Poor baby Steve, always getting confused by various forms of cheese that he doesn't understand.**

 **Anyway, this is it! Se la vie! The very last chapter.**

 **And the announcement that I am sure you have all been anxiously awaiting (just kidding, I know I'm the most excited about this; it's inevitable): the Jane Austen AU lineup.**

 **First off, I'll be starting with a Stucky Pride and Prejudice AU. (Just in time for Civil War, of course. I have a feeling we'll all need some Stucky feels then)**

 **Then we'll get some Romanogers (which I've never done before - how exciting) in the form of an Emma AU.**

 **Then we'll get Stony (which I've also never done, but definitely skirted around) in a fun and zany Mansfield Park.**

 **Finally, we'll get Sam and Steve (I don't know their ship name? Yikes? Not a great start) in Persuasion (probably).**

 **Obviously it is going to take me a little while to get through all of this - it's one of my bigger undertakings - but it definitely will not be boring. With Steve involved, how could it be?**

 **And before I go, I'd just like to release this request out into the world once more: because this is going to be such a big project for me, I'd love some beta readers/people down to discuss ideas and headcanons for each AU. You can pick and choose which one you want to talk about/read about, obviously, but I can never get too much input. Just message me if you think you're down!**


End file.
